Some problems with snd-au8830

Some problems with snd-au8830

[Joshua Kwan]

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Hello ALSA developers (cc: LKML for any inspiration),

Some snd-au8830 concerns..

I've recently been using my Aureal Vortex2 SQ2500 with ALSA's snd-au8830
to do some recording, and I got a humongous pile of these in my dmesg:

vortex: IRQ reg error
vortex: IRQ fifo error
vortex: IRQ dma error

and at the end of each batch:

vortex: 0 virt=0, real=0, delta=-1

Also, I can't seem to start up JACK using the ALSA backend:

loading driver ..
creating alsa driver ...
hw:0|hw:0|1024|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
control device hw:0
configuring for 48000Hz, period = 1024 frames, buffer = 2 periods
Couldn't open hw:0 for 32bit samples trying 24bit instead
Couldn't open hw:0 for 24bit samples trying 16bit instead
ALSA: cannot set period size to 1024 frames for capture
ALSA: cannot configure capture channel
cannot load driver module alsa

It only works when I use -p 512 (512 frames/period) and disable capture
outputs:

$ jackd -d alsa -p512 -P

creating alsa driver ... hw:0|-|512|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
control device hw:0
configuring for 48000Hz, period = 512 frames, buffer = 2 periods
Couldn't open hw:0 for 32bit samples trying 24bit instead
Couldn't open hw:0 for 24bit samples trying 16bit instead

It all works perfectly with my other machine which uses snd-intel8x0.
(Except, of course, that there's no nice hardware mixing.) Any ideas?

Thanks!

-- 
Joshua Kwan

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Re: Some problems with snd-au8830

[Manuel Jander]

Hi,

On Sun, 2004-09-12 at 04:42, Joshua Kwan wrote:
> Hello ALSA developers (cc: LKML for any inspiration),
> 
> Some snd-au8830 concerns..
> 
> I've recently been using my Aureal Vortex2 SQ2500 with ALSA's snd-au8830
> to do some recording, and I got a humongous pile of these in my dmesg:
> 
> vortex: IRQ reg error
> vortex: IRQ fifo error
> vortex: IRQ dma error

That are hardware error flags. Normally, one "IRQ fifo error" occurrs
for the first time playback ocurrs. But more than one message of those
plus the others certainly is odd. I Would try to change the PCI slot. By
the way, do you mind sending a lspci output, and some general
information about your system ?

> and at the end of each batch:
> 
> vortex: 0 virt=0, real=0, delta=-1

This means that there where severe xrun condition. delta is the
difference between the previous and current DMA subbuffer (directly
mapped to periods). It could be due to missing interrupts (bad
mainboard) or due to system overload. If you are using 2 periods,
delta=-1 would mean you are one period behind realtime.

> Also, I can't seem to start up JACK using the ALSA backend:
> 
> loading driver ..
> creating alsa driver ...
> hw:0|hw:0|1024|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
> control device hw:0
> configuring for 48000Hz, period = 1024 frames, buffer = 2 periods
> Couldn't open hw:0 for 32bit samples trying 24bit instead
> Couldn't open hw:0 for 24bit samples trying 16bit instead
> ALSA: cannot set period size to 1024 frames for capture
> ALSA: cannot configure capture channel
> cannot load driver module alsa
> 
> It only works when I use -p 512 (512 frames/period) and disable capture
> outputs:
> 
> $ jackd -d alsa -p512 -P
> 
> creating alsa driver ... hw:0|-|512|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
> control device hw:0
> configuring for 48000Hz, period = 512 frames, buffer = 2 periods
> Couldn't open hw:0 for 32bit samples trying 24bit instead
> Couldn't open hw:0 for 24bit samples trying 16bit instead
> 
> It all works perfectly with my other machine which uses snd-intel8x0.
> (Except, of course, that there's no nice hardware mixing.) Any ideas?

Cool that you actually got jackd working :P, i never got it working on
whatever hardware i have tried it (intel8x0, ESS maestro 2e, au8820 and
au8830). The aureal driver does support any period size power of 2 upto
4096 bytes; that includes 1024 (4096 if that where 16bit stereo frames
instead bytes). Why jackd was unable to set that up ? I guess the error
message is somewhat wrong; probably some other parameter could not be
met.

Best Regards

Manuel Jander




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Re: Some problems with snd-au8830

[Joshua Kwan]

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On Sun, Sep 12, 2004 at 03:22:09PM -0400, Manuel Jander wrote:
> That are hardware error flags. Normally, one "IRQ fifo error" occurrs
> for the first time playback ocurrs. But more than one message of those
> plus the others certainly is odd. I Would try to change the PCI slot. By
> the way, do you mind sending a lspci output, and some general
> information about your system ?

Yeah, I always notice the fifo error when I play for the first time.
There's also usually a large crackle which is kind of bad..

Well, the card is in my last PCI slot. I'll try moving it though.

Here's lspci info:

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (different version?) (rev c1)
0000:00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 1 (rev c1)
0000:00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 4 (rev c1)
0000:00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 3 (rev c1)
0000:00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 2 (rev c1)
0000:00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 5 (rev c1)
0000:00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 ISA Bridge (rev a4)
0000:00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce2 SMBus (MCP) (rev a2)
0000:00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
0000:00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
0000:00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
0000:00:04.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Ethernet Controller (rev a1)
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AC97 Audio Controler (MCP) (rev a1)
0000:00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 External PCI Bridge (rev a3)
0000:00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation nForce2 IDE (rev a2)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (rev c1)
0000:01:09.0 Multimedia audio controller: Aureal Semiconductor Vortex 2 (rev fa)
0000:02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R100 QD [Radeon 7200]

> Cool that you actually got jackd working :P, i never got it working on
> whatever hardware i have tried it (intel8x0, ESS maestro 2e, au8820 and
> au8830). The aureal driver does support any period size power of 2 upto
> 4096 bytes; that includes 1024 (4096 if that where 16bit stereo frames
> instead bytes). Why jackd was unable to set that up ? I guess the error
> message is somewhat wrong; probably some other parameter could not be
> met.

-p512 -P sounds like utter crap, btw. And if I do jackd -d oss, it all
works very nicely.

Would it matter that my .asoundrc is set up for hardware mixing?

pcm.au8830 {
  type hw
  card 0
}

ctl.au8830 {
  type hw
  card 0
}

Thanks for the help so far.

-- 
Joshua Kwan

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Re: Some problems with snd-au8830

[Manuel Jander]

Hi

On Sun, 2004-09-12 at 17:54, Joshua Kwan wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 12, 2004 at 03:22:09PM -0400, Manuel Jander wrote:
> > That are hardware error flags. Normally, one "IRQ fifo error" occurrs
> > for the first time playback ocurrs. But more than one message of those
> > plus the others certainly is odd. I Would try to change the PCI slot. By
> > the way, do you mind sending a lspci output, and some general
> > information about your system ?
> 
> Yeah, I always notice the fifo error when I play for the first time.
> There's also usually a large crackle which is kind of bad..

Oops, thats very odd too... Any chance to record that and send me a
sample ? Knowing exactly how it sounds, could give me a clue.

> Well, the card is in my last PCI slot. I'll try moving it though.
> 
> Here's lspci info:
> 
> 0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (different version?) (rev c1)
> 0000:00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 1 (rev c1)
> 0000:00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 4 (rev c1)
> 0000:00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 3 (rev c1)
> 0000:00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 2 (rev c1)
> 0000:00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 5 (rev c1)
> 0000:00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 ISA Bridge (rev a4)
> 0000:00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce2 SMBus (MCP) (rev a2)
> 0000:00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
> 0000:00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
> 0000:00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
> 0000:00:04.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Ethernet Controller (rev a1)
> 0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AC97 Audio Controler (MCP) (rev a1)
> 0000:00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 External PCI Bridge (rev a3)
> 0000:00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation nForce2 IDE (rev a2)
> 0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (rev c1)
> 0000:01:09.0 Multimedia audio controller: Aureal Semiconductor Vortex 2 (rev fa)
> 0000:02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R100 QD [Radeon 7200]

Hmm, is that a 64bit Opteron or something like that ? Kernel version ?
alsa-driver from vanilla kernel or compiled separately ? How can i
reproduce your situation/scenario ?

> > Cool that you actually got jackd working :P, i never got it working on
> > whatever hardware i have tried it (intel8x0, ESS maestro 2e, au8820 and
> > au8830). The aureal driver does support any period size power of 2 upto
> > 4096 bytes; that includes 1024 (4096 if that where 16bit stereo frames
> > instead bytes). Why jackd was unable to set that up ? I guess the error
> > message is somewhat wrong; probably some other parameter could not be
> > met.
> 
> -p512 -P sounds like utter crap, btw. And if I do jackd -d oss, it all
> works very nicely.

Thats a very common case, that happens when programs try setting weird
buffer settings, and don't take into account that the actually settings
are not necessarily exactly those requested (but as close as possible).
There is not much that can be done in the driver to change that.
While using OSS, usually a more sane buffer setting is at use, and the
badly behaving app looses some control (or messing ability).

> Would it matter that my .asoundrc is set up for hardware mixing?

You should not need any .asoundrc settings for hardware mixing. It works
just out of the box.

Best Regards

Manuel Jander




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Re: Some problems with snd-au8830

[Joshua Kwan]

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On Mon, Sep 13, 2004 at 12:43:51AM -0400, Manuel Jander wrote:
> Oops, thats very odd too... Any chance to record that and send me a
> sample ? Knowing exactly how it sounds, could give me a clue.

I may, if I have time this week.

> Hmm, is that a 64bit Opteron or something like that ? Kernel version ?
> alsa-driver from vanilla kernel or compiled separately ? How can i
> reproduce your situation/scenario ?

Nope. It's a Socket A motherboard with an Athlon XP 3200+ in it. Version
2.6.9-rc1 (although it started happening many revisions ago, possibly
even when the driver was first merged.)

> You should not need any .asoundrc settings for hardware mixing. It works
> just out of the box.

Oh, maybe it used to be different, but I didn't find that it worked
until I did that.. I will experiment.

-- 
Joshua Kwan

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