alsa-scarlett-gui/INSTALL.md

ALSA Scarlett2 Control Panel Installation

Prerequisites

Linux Kernel with the ALSA Scarlett2 Protocol Driver. Use uname -r to check what kernel version you are running.

• Use at least version 5.14 for Scarlett Gen 3 support and bug fixes for the Gen 2 support.
• For Clarett+ 8Pre support, you need 6.1.
• For the other Clarett USB and Clarett+ models, you need 6.7.
• For the level meters to work, you need 6.7.

If you don't have 6.7, you can get the driver from here and build it for your current kernel:

https://github.com/geoffreybennett/scarlett-gen2/releases/tag/v6.5.11c1

Enabling the Driver

As of Linux 6.7 the driver is enabled by default and you can skip this section.

If you're running a kernel before 6.7, the driver needs to be enabled at module load time with the device_setup=1 option to insmod/modprobe. Create a file /etc/modprobe.d/scarlett.conf containing the appropriate line for your device:

Scarlett Gen 2:

• 6i6: options snd_usb_audio vid=0x1235 pid=0x8203 device_setup=1
• 18i8: options snd_usb_audio vid=0x1235 pid=0x8204 device_setup=1
• 18i20: options snd_usb_audio vid=0x1235 pid=0x8201 device_setup=1

Scarlett Gen 3:

• Solo: options snd_usb_audio vid=0x1235 pid=0x8211 device_setup=1
• 2i2: options snd_usb_audio vid=0x1235 pid=0x8210 device_setup=1
• 4i4: options snd_usb_audio vid=0x1235 pid=0x8212 device_setup=1
• 8i6: options snd_usb_audio vid=0x1235 pid=0x8213 device_setup=1
• 18i8: options snd_usb_audio vid=0x1235 pid=0x8214 device_setup=1
• 18i20: options snd_usb_audio vid=0x1235 pid=0x8215 device_setup=1

Clarett+:

• 8Pre: options snd_usb_audio vid=0x1235 pid=0x820c device_setup=1

Or you can use a sledgehammer:

options snd_usb_audio device_setup=1,1,1,1

to pass that option to the first 4 USB audio devices.

To see if the driver is present and enabled: dmesg | grep -i -A 5 -B 5 focusrite should display information like:

New USB device found, idVendor=1235, idProduct=8215, bcdDevice= 6.0b
Product: Scarlett 18i20 USB
Focusrite Scarlett Gen 2/3 Mixer Driver enabled pid=0x8215

If the driver is disabled you’ll see a message like:

Focusrite Scarlett Gen 2/3 Mixer Driver disabled; use options
snd_usb_audio vid=0x1235 pid=0x8215 device_setup=1 to enable and
report any issues to g@b4.vu",

Building and Running

On Fedora, the packages alsa-lib-devel and gtk4-devel need to be installed:

sudo dnf -y install alsa-lib-devel gtk4-devel

On Ubuntu 22.04:

sudo apt -y install git make gcc libgtk-4-dev libasound2-dev

To download from github:

git clone https://github.com/geoffreybennett/alsa-scarlett-gui
cd alsa-scarlett-gui

To build:

cd src
make -j4

To run:

./alsa-scarlett-gui

You can install it into /usr/local (binary, desktop file, and icon) with:

sudo make install

And uninstall with:

sudo make uninstall

Continue on to reading USAGE.md for usage information and known issues.

Flatpak

With Flatpak, in any distro:

flatpak-builder --user --install --force-clean flatpak-build \
    vu.b4.alsa-scarlett-gui.yml

Be sure to use flatpak-build as the directory where the flatpak is built or hence you risk bundling the artifacts when comitting!

If you get messages like these:

Failed to init: Unable to find sdk org.gnome.Sdk version 45
Failed to init: Unable to find runtime org.gnome.Platform version 45

Then install them:

flatpak install org.gnome.Sdk
flatpak install org.gnome.Platform

If you get:

Looking for matches…
error: No remote refs found for ‘org.gnome.Sdk’

Then:

flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo