[alsa-devel] SB X-Fi driver status update

[Takashi Iwai]

At Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:34:46 +0400,
The Source wrote:
> 
> Alexey Bazhin пишет:
> > On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:18:32 +0200
> > Takashi Iwai <tiwai at suse.de> wrote:
> >
> >   
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> now I'm stabilizing the driver a bit.  I hope it won't hang up any
> >> more (so often), and make you happy testing. 
> >>     
> > speakers-test and aplay works perfect with both base_rates and any
> > sample rate (tried only stereo samples), but mplayer become more glitchy
> > - sound pauses for a bit every 5-10 seconds, dmesg included.
> >
> >   
> >> - As default, the driver works only as a constant sample rate, either
> >>   48000 or 96000 (default).  The rate can be changed via the module
> >>   option base_rate.  For enabling the continuous rate support (it was
> >>   on before), define XXX_CONT_RATE in sbxfi.c.
> >>     
> > only tried speakers-test:
> > 96khz works fine
> > 48khz plays slow (frequency is lower than it should be)
> > 44.1khz silent, speakers-test ends with error, dmesg included.
> >
> > root at mayonaka:~# speaker-test -c 2 -r 44100 -t sine
> >
> > speaker-test 1.0.15
> >
> > Playback device is default
> > Stream parameters are 44100Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
> > Sine wave rate is 440.0000Hz
> > Rate set to 44100Hz (requested 44100Hz)
> > Buffer size range from 32 to 16384
> > Period size range from 32 to 16384
> > Using max buffer size 16384
> > Periods = 4
> > was set period_size = 4096
> > was set buffer_size = 16384
> >  0 - Front Left
> > Write error: -5,Input/output error
> > xrun_recovery failed: -5,Input/output error
> > Transfer failed: Operation not permitted
> >  
> >   
> >> - If playback works well, try to define XXX_USE_SG in sbxfi.c.  This
> >>   will make the driver using SG buffer instead of continuous pages.
> >>     
> > works absolutely the same as without it.
> >
> >   
> >> - Also, test SBXFI_DMA_MASK being DMA_32BIT_MASK, especially if you
> >>   have RAM more than 2GB.
> >>     
> > i have 3GB RAM on my test box, everything worked fine with 32-bit mask,
> > but i haven't done many tests...
> >
> >   
> >> - You can try dmix as well.  E.g. simply run like 
> >> 	% aplay -Dplug:dmix:0 foo.wav
> >>     
> > works fine.
> >
> >   
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Alsa-devel mailing list
> > Alsa-devel at alsa-project.org
> > http://mailman.alsa-project.org/mailman/listinfo/alsa-devel
> >   
> --I tested several players with alsa (oss causes oops):
> --xine works fine
> --xmms ok
> --mplayer constantly shows some error message I wasn't able to read --(it's
> --blinking) and sound pauses for ~0.2 second every ~27 seconds.
> 
> mplayer error message was about PCM not found.

Could you elaborate?

> Just set mixer channel to 
> master in mplayer alsa output settings to avoid it.

If I understand correctly, you mean "PCM" mixer element is not found.
OK, that's basically a problem of mplayer.  But, in future, we can add
"PCM" mixer volume as well.

> This won't help 
> solve the sound-pause problem however.

Not sure about this yet.


thanks,

Takashi