ERROR: USB Sound card with unsafe characters

ERROR: USB Sound card with unsafe characters

[Brian Jones]

Newby alert -  but I don't know how to get this bug to the developers

I have been trying to work on a fix for Bug 1498129 -
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/1498129  on
Ubuntu

My USB soundcard is an Asus Xonar U7 Echelon Edition
<https://www.asus.com/Sound-Cards/Xonar_U7_Echelon_Edition/> which
identifies itself to alsa as "Xonar U7 Echelon Ed." The card is supported
by alsa and works well in analog mode but I cannot get digital output via
alsa.

It has iec958 as device 1 rather than device 0 and I can access digital
output by referring to directly to hw:x,1 but cannot access digital output
via alsa.

Attempts to change the iec958 device in USB-Audio.conf fail because of the
period char and apparently my level of OS (Mint 17.3 based on Ubuntu 14.04,
kernel 3.19.0-32) does not have alsa supporting USB vendorid:productid
naming so I don't have a workaround.

If a patch exists, advice on applying/rebuilding alsa would be gratefully
appreciated.

Re: ERROR: USB Sound card with unsafe characters

[Clemens Ladisch]

Brian Jones wrote:
> I don't know how to get this bug to the developers

Just send it to the alsa-devel list.  Once.

> My USB soundcard is an Asus Xonar U7 Echelon Edition
> <https://www.asus.com/Sound-Cards/Xonar_U7_Echelon_Edition/> which
> identifies itself to alsa as "Xonar U7 Echelon Ed." The card is supported
> by alsa and works well in analog mode but I cannot get digital output via
> alsa.
>
> Attempts to change the iec958 device in USB-Audio.conf fail because of the
> period char and apparently my level of OS (Mint 17.3 based on Ubuntu 14.04,
> kernel 3.19.0-32) does not have alsa supporting USB vendorid:productid
> naming

The vendor:product naming is used only for device that do not have a name.
The newer version of alsa-lib would replace unsafe characters (like '.')
with an underscore.


Try changing /usr/share/alsa/cards/USB-Audio.conf.  Dont add an entry to
the USB-Audio.pcm.iec958_device list near the top, but go to the bottom,
to the USB-Audio.pcm.iec958.0 definition, and change this:

USB-Audio.pcm.iec958.0 {
	@args [ CARD AES0 AES1 AES2 AES3 ]
	@args.CARD { type string }
	@args.AES0 { type integer }
	@args.AES1 { type integer }
	@args.AES2 { type integer }
	@args.AES3 { type integer }
	@func refer
	name {
		...(lots of stuff)...
	}
	default {
		...(lots of stuff)...
	}
}

to this:

USB-Audio.pcm.iec958.0 {
	@args [ CARD AES0 AES1 AES2 AES3 ]
	@args.CARD { type string }
	@args.AES0 { type integer }
	@args.AES1 { type integer }
	@args.AES2 { type integer }
	@args.AES3 { type integer }
	type hw                         # no @func
	card $CARD
	device 1
}

(This will break S/PDIF on all other USB devices, but who cares ...)


Regards,
Clemens

Re: ERROR: USB Sound card with unsafe characters

[Brian Jones]

Clemens - thank you!!! I have been trying for several months to fix this. I
am now listening to the card via SPDIF for the first time!

My apologies over the two sends to alsa-dev - I sent the first one before
my registration to the mailing list was approved and hadn't seen it appear
on the list today after my registration had been complete for a day, so I
assumed it had got dumped because I was not a list member when I sent it.
So I resent it today. I will only send once for future problems, apologies.

Brian



On 29 February 2016 at 09:42, Clemens Ladisch <clemens@ladisch.de> wrote:

> Brian Jones wrote:
> > I don't know how to get this bug to the developers
>
> Just send it to the alsa-devel list.  Once.
>
> > My USB soundcard is an Asus Xonar U7 Echelon Edition
> > <https://www.asus.com/Sound-Cards/Xonar_U7_Echelon_Edition/> which
> > identifies itself to alsa as "Xonar U7 Echelon Ed." The card is supported
> > by alsa and works well in analog mode but I cannot get digital output via
> > alsa.
> >
> > Attempts to change the iec958 device in USB-Audio.conf fail because of
> the
> > period char and apparently my level of OS (Mint 17.3 based on Ubuntu
> 14.04,
> > kernel 3.19.0-32) does not have alsa supporting USB vendorid:productid
> > naming
>
> The vendor:product naming is used only for device that do not have a name.
> The newer version of alsa-lib would replace unsafe characters (like '.')
> with an underscore.
>
>
> Try changing /usr/share/alsa/cards/USB-Audio.conf.  Dont add an entry to
> the USB-Audio.pcm.iec958_device list near the top, but go to the bottom,
> to the USB-Audio.pcm.iec958.0 definition, and change this:
>
> USB-Audio.pcm.iec958.0 {
>         @args [ CARD AES0 AES1 AES2 AES3 ]
>         @args.CARD { type string }
>         @args.AES0 { type integer }
>         @args.AES1 { type integer }
>         @args.AES2 { type integer }
>         @args.AES3 { type integer }
>         @func refer
>         name {
>                 ...(lots of stuff)...
>         }
>         default {
>                 ...(lots of stuff)...
>         }
> }
>
> to this:
>
> USB-Audio.pcm.iec958.0 {
>         @args [ CARD AES0 AES1 AES2 AES3 ]
>         @args.CARD { type string }
>         @args.AES0 { type integer }
>         @args.AES1 { type integer }
>         @args.AES2 { type integer }
>         @args.AES3 { type integer }
>         type hw                         # no @func
>         card $CARD
>         device 1
> }
>
> (This will break S/PDIF on all other USB devices, but who cares ...)
>
>
> Regards,
> Clemens
>