[alsa-devel] RME Fireface alsa driver

[thet]

thank you! that seems like good work.

I am not confident to do the backport, but I will test when the kernel
is available in a repo to install.

Or if you can send me a compiled kernel to test I can test it.


On 17/12/2018 14:16, Takashi Sakamoto wrote:
> Hi,
> (C.C.ed to alsa-devel)
>
> At first, I apologize that ALSA fireface driver since Linux kernel
> v4.12 includes some bugs for its packet handling for PCM capture
> substream[1].
> This bug can brings disorder of jackd process.
>
> Furthermore, even if handling rx packets correctly, Fireface 400
> cannot generate sounds because audio data frame is not picked up from
> isochronous packets to DSP[2].
>
> I've already posted some patches to fix these bugs. The patches were
> already merged to ALSA upstream and they'll be going to mainline in
> next merge window for v4.21 kernel. They were also posted for stable
> kernel and later you can receive patched kernel image if you use any
> stable kernels.
>
> If you'll test these patches in current your environment, please get
> recent code from my remote repository for backport to Linux v4.17 or
> later:
> https://github.com/takaswie/snd-firewire-improve
>
> Your test will be great help to me because I've already left Fireface
> 400.
> (I rented it just for two weeks and I'll leave Fireface 800 soon as
> well.)
>
> On Fri, 14 Dec 2018, thet wrote:
>> OK I have the FF400 set up now.
>
> In my recent work for Fireface 800[3][4], I ensure that Fireface 800
> can generate sounds even if the HOST LED turns on. This is the same
> experience with Fireface 400. Thus you can ignore whether the LED turn
> off
> or not.
>
>> What action should I take to create an error that is meaningful?
>> ..
>> when I start audacious from the terminal using the alsa output plugin
>> and the FF400 selected I get:
>
> Any GUI tools are not necessarily good for debugging. Please use
> 'aplay' insted, like:
>
> $ aplay -v -D hw:Fireface400 -r 44100 -c 18 -f S32_LE /dev/urandom
> $ aplay -v -D hw:Fireface400 -r 88200 -c 14 -f S32_LE /dev/urandom
> $ aplay -v -D hw:Fireface400 -r 192000 -c 10 -f S32_LE /dev/urandom
>
> In the above cases, I expect your unit can generate noisy sounds with the
> latest code of driver.
>
> Anyway, I note you not to drop list address
> (alsa-devel at alsa-project.org) from CC list. It's valuable to share
> experiences of errors/failures because potentially they are good
> information for developers to seek bugs in software and be going to
> fix them.
>
> [1] [alsa-devel] [PATCH 1/3] ALSA: firewire-lib: fix wrong handling
> payload_length as payload_quadlet
> http://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2018-December/143147.html
>
> [2] [alsa-devel] [PATCH] ALSA: fireface: fix for state to fetch PCM
> frames
> http://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2018-December/143150.html
>
> [3] [alsa-devel] [PATCH 0/8] ALSA: fireface: add support for Fireface
> 800 with MIDI functionality only
> http://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2018-December/142826.html
>
> [4] [alsa-devel] [PATCH 0/5] ALSA: fireface: add support for Fireface
> 800 with streaming functionality
> http://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2018-December/143154.html
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Takashi Sakamoto
>