[alsa-devel] Period Size in hw_params

[Paul Kavan]

I finally have my basic audio applications working. I divided it into
capture and playback and began with playback as I had a nice sinewave I
could use to playback. Anyway, I think my hangup with getting the thing
working was with the buffer and period information. My apps now do this:

int periods = 2;  /* Number of periods */
snd_pcm_uframes_t periodsize = 1000; /* Periodsize (bytes) */

 /* Set number of periods */
  if (snd_pcm_hw_params_set_periods(pcm_handle, hwparams, periods, 0) < 0) {
    fprintf(stderr, "Error setting periods.\n");
    return(-1);
  }
  /* Set buffer size */
  size = periodsize * periods;
  if (snd_pcm_hw_params_set_buffer_size(pcm_handle, hwparams, (size)>>2) <
0) {
    fprintf(stderr, "Error setting buffer size.\n");
    return(-1);
  }

I borrowed the period size from using aplay -v and seeing what it used.
Setting number of periods to 2 was a little bit of guess work based on what
others seem to use. I have looked at the alsa documentation and cannot see
how I could have determined these numbers would have worked without trial
and error. Can anyone either give me a explanation of how to determine these
or a pointer to some decent documentation that talks about this?

Thanks.

Paul

-- 
***************************************
Paul David Kavan
Project Engineer
GRH Electronics, Inc.
402-734-4900
pkavan at gmail.com
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