@Daniel Mack: Send you a FTU

@Daniel Mack: Send you a FTU

[Aurélien Leblond]

Hi Daniel,

I saw on the mailing that you a Felix have been doing a great deal of
work to provide better support for the M-Audio FastTrack Ultra.
I tested yesterday the new patch that provides mixer and the
possibility to change the internal routing of the soundcard... I can
finally use all the input/output to use external FX, that's very
handy!

Anyway, on the M-Audio forum, Felix has been mentionning several times
that there were few bugs that needed to be fixed with this soundcard,
but that you needed to get your hand on one device to fix them (and
may be even improve things around its support in general).

As M-Audio generously denied providing you with one (haaaa, these big
corporations), I'm ok getting a brand new one sent to you. That would
be part of my donation to the open-source community!

So the question really is...How would we organise that?

Regards,
Aurélien

Re: @Daniel Mack: Send you a FTU

[Paul Menzel]

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Dear Aurélien,


Am Montag, den 13.06.2011, 11:25 +0100 schrieb Aurélien Leblond:

[…]

> As M-Audio generously denied providing you with one (haaaa, these big
> corporations), I'm ok getting a brand new one sent to you. That would
> be part of my donation to the open-source community!

way to go! Thank you so much for this support. I hope it will help
Daniel!

> So the question really is...How would we organise that?

I guess to save shipping costs the store should ship it directly to
Daniel. But you will figure something out I guess.


Thanks,

Paul

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Re: @Daniel Mack: Send you a FTU

[Felix Homann]

Hi Aurélien,

wow, what a generous offer!!!

I'm deeply impressed by this step of yours!

Kind regards,

Felix


Am 13.06.2011 12:25, schrieb Aurélien Leblond:
> Hi Daniel,
>
> I saw on the mailing that you a Felix have been doing a great deal of
> work to provide better support for the M-Audio FastTrack Ultra.
> I tested yesterday the new patch that provides mixer and the
> possibility to change the internal routing of the soundcard... I can
> finally use all the input/output to use external FX, that's very
> handy!
>
> Anyway, on the M-Audio forum, Felix has been mentionning several times
> that there were few bugs that needed to be fixed with this soundcard,
> but that you needed to get your hand on one device to fix them (and
> may be even improve things around its support in general).
>
> As M-Audio generously denied providing you with one (haaaa, these big
> corporations), I'm ok getting a brand new one sent to you. That would
> be part of my donation to the open-source community!
>
> So the question really is...How would we organise that?
>
> Regards,
> Aurélien
> _______________________________________________
> Alsa-devel mailing list
> Alsa-devel@alsa-project.org
> http://mailman.alsa-project.org/mailman/listinfo/alsa-devel
>

Re: @Daniel Mack: Send you a FTU

[Daniel Mack]

Hi Aurélien,

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Aurélien Leblond <blablack@gmail.com> wrote:
> I saw on the mailing that you a Felix have been doing a great deal of
> work to provide better support for the M-Audio FastTrack Ultra.
> I tested yesterday the new patch that provides mixer and the
> possibility to change the internal routing of the soundcard... I can
> finally use all the input/output to use external FX, that's very
> handy!
>
> Anyway, on the M-Audio forum, Felix has been mentionning several times
> that there were few bugs that needed to be fixed with this soundcard,
> but that you needed to get your hand on one device to fix them (and
> may be even improve things around its support in general).

Quite frankly, I'm not fully aware about known issues with these
devices that need attention. Could you summarize which problems are
left to look at?

> As M-Audio generously denied providing you with one (haaaa, these big
> corporations), I'm ok getting a brand new one sent to you. That would
> be part of my donation to the open-source community!

Wow, that's quite an offer, I'm impressed. However, I would really
only need a device during development to hook it up to an USB analyzer
and have a look at the dumps. And having access to one would
definitely speed up development. Once the issues are fixed, though, I
can give it back to you or to someone else who actually uses the
device afterwards - I've got enough sound interfaces around here  :)

Plus .. it might take me awhile until I can actually start debugging
this, as I'm drowning in work.

> So the question really is...How would we organise that?

I'll send you my postal address in PM.

Thanks,
Daniel

Re: @Daniel Mack: Send you a FTU

[Aurélien Leblond]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 9:56 AM, Daniel Mack <zonque@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Aurélien,
>
> On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Aurélien Leblond <blablack@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I saw on the mailing that you a Felix have been doing a great deal of
>> work to provide better support for the M-Audio FastTrack Ultra.
>> I tested yesterday the new patch that provides mixer and the
>> possibility to change the internal routing of the soundcard... I can
>> finally use all the input/output to use external FX, that's very
>> handy!
>>
>> Anyway, on the M-Audio forum, Felix has been mentionning several times
>> that there were few bugs that needed to be fixed with this soundcard,
>> but that you needed to get your hand on one device to fix them (and
>> may be even improve things around its support in general).
>
> Quite frankly, I'm not fully aware about known issues with these
> devices that need attention. Could you summarize which problems are
> left to look at?
>
>> As M-Audio generously denied providing you with one (haaaa, these big
>> corporations), I'm ok getting a brand new one sent to you. That would
>> be part of my donation to the open-source community!
>
> Wow, that's quite an offer, I'm impressed. However, I would really
> only need a device during development to hook it up to an USB analyzer
> and have a look at the dumps. And having access to one would
> definitely speed up development. Once the issues are fixed, though, I
> can give it back to you or to someone else who actually uses the
> device afterwards - I've got enough sound interfaces around here  :)
>
> Plus .. it might take me awhile until I can actually start debugging
> this, as I'm drowning in work.
>
>> So the question really is...How would we organise that?
>
> I'll send you my postal address in PM.
>
> Thanks,
> Daniel
>

There are still the issue of samples dropping.

Tto reproduce it:
- Open Audacity and set it up to be using Jack.
- Click Generate -> Tone -> Ok.

"Normally" you should hear very regular pops...

Re: @Daniel Mack: Send you a FTU

[Aurélien Leblond]

>> As M-Audio generously denied providing you with one (haaaa, these big
>> corporations), I'm ok getting a brand new one sent to you. That would
>> be part of my donation to the open-source community!
>
> Wow, that's quite an offer, I'm impressed. However, I would really
> only need a device during development to hook it up to an USB analyzer
> and have a look at the dumps. And having access to one would
> definitely speed up development. Once the issues are fixed, though, I
> can give it back to you or to someone else who actually uses the
> device afterwards - I've got enough sound interfaces around here  :)

As bad as it sounds, I can hardle spend a day without playing music,
and my soundcard is the central piece of my setup :)

But feel free to sale the device back when you don't need it to get
yourself another device that needs debugging!
Or you can always make a donation to Ardour or Hydrogen, God knows they need it!

Re: @Daniel Mack: Send you a FTU

[Felix Homann]

Hi Daniel,

(just to have it public on the list)

Am 14.06.2011 10:56, schrieb Daniel Mack:
>
> Quite frankly, I'm not fully aware about known issues with these
> devices that need attention. Could you summarize which problems are
> left to look at?
>


Here's a list of the issues I'm aware of:

1. Playback clicks:

There are periodic clicks in the playback at all sample rates. They are 
not very noticable in normal use but when you playback a plain sine the 
clicks are very obvious. When we discussed it last year we suspected 
that the device uses "implicit feedback". For the record: When we used 
the device with QUIRK_AUDIO_STANDARD_INTERFACE quirks we had clickless 
playback at 48 kHz and 96 kHz, but playback at 44.1 kHz and 88.2 kHz was 
totally distorted and the kernel would eventually crash after a minute 
or so.


2. External clock sync

The FTU devices are capable of syncing to an external clock via SPDIF. I 
don't know how to switch between internal and external clock. I don't 
even have a second audio interface to test with.


3. Mixer control steps:

The mixer controls are working fine now but are very fine grained. Being 
that fine grained it is hard to control the mixer in some mixer programs 
like alsamixer (alsamixer-qt4 and gamix work fine). A little bit of fine 
tuning would be nice. But I don't know which step size the hardware 
actually supports.

4. Reverb unit:

The FTU devices have a reverb unit which isn't supported, yet. It's 
straight forward based on the basic mixer support . I've almost got it 
wroking except for the "Reverb Program" switch. I know how to do it, so 
probably there will be a patch soon.


5. "Lost" URBs:

Some users reported occasional playback distortion combined with dmesg 
output like this: "ALSA urb.c:480: frame 5 active: -18". I don't know if 
this is really related to the driver. Actually I don't think so but who 
knows ...


Are there any other issues?

Kind regards,

Felix

Re: @Daniel Mack: Send you a FTU

[Aurélien Leblond]

> Are there any other issues?
>
> Felix

I don't know how related to the Alsa Driver and the FTU that problem
is, nor if it has any impact, but dmesg still reports the following to
me when I plug the FTU, even with the latest git driver.

[ 1846.736062] usb 2-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
[ 1846.869790] usb 2-1: config 1 interface 3 altsetting 0 bulk
endpoint 0x7 has invalid maxpacket 8
[ 1846.869802] usb 2-1: config 1 interface 3 altsetting 0 bulk
endpoint 0x87 has invalid maxpacket 8


@Daniel: You had some doubt about you having the time to work on these
issues or even the need of getting your hands on the FTU. Can you
confirm it now? If so, I'll get it shipped to you this evening and you
can expect to receive it in the next few days. If you would prefer to
wait, let me know.... Your call!

Re: @Daniel Mack: Send you a FTU

[Daniel Mack]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Aurélien Leblond <blablack@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Are there any other issues?
>>
>> Felix
>
> I don't know how related to the Alsa Driver and the FTU that problem
> is, nor if it has any impact, but dmesg still reports the following to
> me when I plug the FTU, even with the latest git driver.
>
> [ 1846.736062] usb 2-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
> [ 1846.869790] usb 2-1: config 1 interface 3 altsetting 0 bulk
> endpoint 0x7 has invalid maxpacket 8
> [ 1846.869802] usb 2-1: config 1 interface 3 altsetting 0 bulk
> endpoint 0x87 has invalid maxpacket 8

That is a warning about bogus USB descriptors, and there's nothing the
usb audio driver can do about them.

> @Daniel: You had some doubt about you having the time to work on these
> issues or even the need of getting your hands on the FTU. Can you
> confirm it now? If so, I'll get it shipped to you this evening and you
> can expect to receive it in the next few days. If you would prefer to
> wait, let me know.... Your call!

Send it out, and I will care as soon as I can :)

Daniel

Re: @Daniel Mack: Send you a FTU

[Aurélien Leblond]

>> @Daniel: You had some doubt about you having the time to work on these
>> issues or even the need of getting your hands on the FTU. Can you
>> confirm it now? If so, I'll get it shipped to you this evening and you
>> can expect to receive it in the next few days. If you would prefer to
>> wait, let me know.... Your call!
>
> Send it out, and I will care as soon as I can :)
>
> Daniel

Hi Daniel,

Shipped!
Expect it in the next few days in your mailbox :)

Aurélien

Re: @Daniel Mack: Send you a FTU

[Aurélien Leblond]

Hi Daniel,

Could you just confirm you received the soundcard?
Just want to be sure it's not lost in space!

Thanks in advance,
Aurélien

Re: @Daniel Mack: Send you a FTU

[Daniel Mack]

On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 11:36 AM, Aurélien Leblond <blablack@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
>
> Could you just confirm you received the soundcard?
> Just want to be sure it's not lost in space!

Nope, it's all good. Received the package Friday last week. Thanks a
lot, I will let you know as soon as I have something for you to test!

Daniel