LMMS • Forums

Fellow Linux users, please help a guy out...

Hi, I'm trying to figure out how to simultaneously play/edit LMMS in the foreground while having Audacious run in the background.

If anybody has this figured out, please let me know your audio driver settings for both programs. Currently, I can't figure this out; I can play both programs separately, but I get a prohibitive device error in LMMS if I try to run LMMS while Audacious is playing.

Currently, I'm using ALSA mode on LMMS, because I can't figure out the other modes.
On Audacious, I'm using PulseAudio mode.

Both programs seem flexible enough that something should work, right?

UPDATE: found a workaround. see later message:
viewtopic.php?p=87160#p87177

mjolnir wrote: ↑

August 30th, 2026, 2:18 am

how to simultaneously play/edit LMMS in the foreground while having Audacious run in the background.

You mean this: https://audacious-media-player.org/
Right?
I know that you are asking for a different thing, but why not use VLC or Audacity? Both play fine with LMMS.

Hmmm, I'm not a fan of VLC; I used to use it in the past (it's kind of bloated and complex and I don't like the GUI and had problems with it NOT retaining it's custom settings).

However, you got me thinking. So I tried running other media players and a standalone editor. Each of them also have the same problem as Audacious; LMMS complains with some audio device error, and pushes me into the preferences to change the audio device. As it turns out, I get the audio device error no matter which program I use, as long as the other program(s) is playing audio.

I seem to otherwise get the best LMMS responsiveness if I use ALSA, but I guess maybe I can't use that if I need the audio device to not be locked up (exclusively in use). So I guess this is more of an ALSA (normal) issue(?) than an LMMS issue.

I guess I had improperly assumed that with pipewire on Linux, I could always run programs simultaneously for audio, but I seem to be wrong about that.

I guess I'm gonna bite the bullet and try to switch LMMS's audio device to PulseAudio (even though I use PipeWire); PipeWire is supposed to emulate PulseAudio to support it. But last time I used PulseAudio device mode on LMMS I had some kind of problem (I forget what it was), so I'm a bit wary.

I guess as long as I have a working backup of my system, I don't need to worry so much.
I'll report back if I get something working.

OK, so I checked my Audio Device ("interface") settings in LMMS.
There's a huge choice of sound device protocols(?):

ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture)
Dummy (no sound output)
JACK (Jack Audio Connection Kit)
OSS (Open Sound System)
PortAudio
PulseAudio
SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer)
sndio
soundio

This is kind of overwhelming, and PipeWire isn't listed.
What I now tried to do, is see if I can use PipeWire to launch LMMS to force LMMS to run in ALSA (or some other) emulation mode (instead of directly as ALSA).

"pw-jack lmms" almost worked, but "pw-alsa lmms" didn't work at all (no command found).
"pw-jack lmms" runs LMMS in JACK emulation(?) mode, but since I don't have JACK set up on my system I'm at kind of an impasse.

The error message isn't there, but the OTHER audio programs are totally silent.
However, this lead me to believe that if I had the right JACK accessory or patchbay route, I could get my OTHER programs to play audio at the same time as LMMS.

I guess I will keep experimenting.
Maybe somebody else has an answer too?

mjolnir wrote: ↑

August 30th, 2026, 8:30 pm

OK, so I checked my Audio Device

What about SDL?
Works universally with just about anything

I appreciate your help.
Actually, I found a workaround...

I remembered to use the file browser within LMMS to play WAV files.
Furthermore, it's not too hard to just load such WAV files into an LMMS project.

This way, even though I'm not using, for example, REAPER and it's instruments in the background (via MIDI), I'm still using LMMS's MIDI to trigger LMMS's instruments to overdub onto a WAV file. It's kind of hard to explain.

But part of the change was to switch from importing from LMMS into REAPER (for arranging) and instead to import from REAPER into LMMS for arranging.

In the past, LMMS wasn't stable enough for me to do complex arrangements, but lately it's been stable and I've been able to get more audio work done(!). I'm using the Nighly LMMS's. I can't emphasize enough how much this has helped my workflow.

I still export back into REAPER for final mixing touch-ups, but I recently became comfortable enough with LMMS to even delete my demo edition of FL Studio.

Anyways, Thanks.