[alsa-devel] [PATCH v8 1/6] ALSA: pcm: add IEC958 channel status helper for hw_params

[Jyri Sarha]

On 03/30/16 09:21, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Mar 2016 19:23:12 +0200,
> Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 10:54:08AM +0200, Takashi Iwai wrote:
>>> On Thu, 17 Mar 2016 13:22:29 +0100,
>>> Jyri Sarha wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Add IEC958 channel status helper that gets the audio properties from
>>>> snd_pcm_hw_params instead of snd_pcm_runtime. This is needed to
>>>> produce the channel status bits already in audio stream configuration
>>>> phase.
>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Jyri Sarha <jsarha at ti.com>
>>>
>>> This patch looks almost good to me, but...
>>>
>>>> @@ -71,6 +59,7 @@ int snd_pcm_create_iec958_consumer(struct snd_pcm_runtime *runtime, u8 *cs,
>>>>  			     IEC958_AES4_CON_MAX_WORDLEN_24;
>>>>  			break;
>>>>  		case 24:
>>>> +		case 32: /* Assume 24-bit width for 32-bit samples. */
>>>>  			ws = IEC958_AES4_CON_WORDLEN_24_20 |
>>>>  			     IEC958_AES4_CON_MAX_WORDLEN_24;
>>>>  			break;
>>>
>>> ... this change is silently slipped in.  It should be mentioned in the
>>> changelog, or split to another patch, as this is basically an
>>> orthogonal change.
>>
>> Does it even make sense - AES doesn't have support for 32-bit samples,
>> it can only ever truncate them down to 24-bit.
> 
> Well, using SNDRV_PCM_FORMAT_S32_* for 24 bit samples is seen often on
> real devices, mostly on PCI ones.  So, adding the value 32 check there
> itself is valid, I suppose.  It's rather due to a bad design in the
> current API.
> 

That also happens on SoC environment i2s interfaces for various reasons.
For instance if the i2s bit-clock for sample-rate * 24 * 2 is not
available, but sample-rate * 32 * 2 is.

> The actual bits should be specified hw_params.msbits field, instead.
> But, not all drivers set this properly, unfortunately.
> 

How about allowing the 32-bit format only if hw_params.msbits is set to
24 bits?

I can set the hw_params.msbits to 24 in ASoC hdmi-codec's hw_params,
can't I? I could also fake the whole hw_params struct that I pass to
snd_pcm_create_iec958_consumer_hw_params(), but would that make sense?

What ever the approach, I can of course split the 32 bit support into a
separate subsequent patch, but for instance Beaglebone-black 48kHz
24-bit HDMI audio needs 32 bit format on i2s bus because of the
available i2s bit-clocks.

Best regards,
Jyri