Urgent question

Urgent question

[PIVATY Bertrand]

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Dear all,

 

(Happy New Year)

 

My name is Bertrand Pivaty and I'm a software engineer.

 

We use an audio software to simulate sound communication on our Air
Traffic Control simulator.

The sound quality looks good when using the onboard sound card provided,
but when using any PCI sound card the sound quality is really poor.

Do you have any idea of what could be the reason, or any track where we
should investigate.

 

The software is running on Suse 9.0 with the last Alsa version.

 

Do not hesitate if any question. I will not be allowed to send any part
of the software, but I will do my best to answer.

 

Any comment would be really appreciated.

 

Many thanks in advance.

 

Bertrand

 

 ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Bertrand Pivaty

Engineering Division - OPE/SRS Team

EUROCONTROL Maastricht UAC

Horsterweg 11

NL-6199 AC Maastricht-Airport 

* bertrand.pivaty@eurocontrol.int

* +31 (0)43 366 1362

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

 


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\r

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Re: Urgent question

[James Courtier-Dutton]

PIVATY Bertrand wrote:

>Dear all,
>
> 
>
>(Happy New Year)
>
> 
>
>My name is Bertrand Pivaty and I'm a software engineer.
>
> 
>
>We use an audio software to simulate sound communication on our Air
>Traffic Control simulator.
>
>The sound quality looks good when using the onboard sound card provided,
>but when using any PCI sound card the sound quality is really poor.
>
>Do you have any idea of what could be the reason, or any track where we
>should investigate.
>
> 
>
>The software is running on Suse 9.0 with the last Alsa version.
>
> 
>
>Do not hesitate if any question. I will not be allowed to send any part
>of the software, but I will do my best to answer.
>
> 
>
>Any comment would be really appreciated.
>
> 
>
>Many thanks in advance.
>
> 
>
>Bertrand
>  
>
There is obviously a bug in your software causing this.
In order to test this, try the "speaker-test" program that comes with 
alsa-utils.
It can send pink noise, a single tone, or a .wav file to the sound card.
Another option is "aplay". If these two application deliver sound to the 
sound card parfectly, then it is most certainly a bug in your software.
Without being able to view the source code, there is very little else we 
can do to help you.
If these test programs, cause exactly the same problems that you are 
getting with your software, we would need more detailed information 
regarding your hardware.

e.g.
cat /proc/asound/cards
cat /proc/asound/version





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Re: Urgent question

[Martin Habets]

On Mon, Jan 09, 2006 at 11:07:36AM +0100, PIVATY Bertrand wrote:
> The sound quality looks good when using the onboard sound card provided,
> but when using any PCI sound card the sound quality is really poor.

Have you tried different PCI cards? Or is the issue with a specific
model or chipset?

> Do you have any idea of what could be the reason, or any track where we
> should investigate.

The first obvious step is to figure out if it is an application problem
or a kernel/alsa issue. I usually run 'aplay' or 'speakertest' with a simple
test file to figure that out.
If these work okay it's most likely an application problem.

> The software is running on Suse 9.0 with the last Alsa version.

This does not mean a whole lot to me. Could you send the kernel and alsa
version as reported by uname and /proc/asound/version?

-- 
Martin


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RE: Urgent question

[PIVATY Bertrand]

Hello all,

Thanks for your quick reaction.

aplay and speaker produce the same good quality on both onboard and PCI
sound cards.

It is indeed for us obvious that the problem is coming from the audio
software.

But when checking the source code, I didn't see anything special, I mean
they mainly use the ALSA api, and it is basically looks like the
different ALSA tutorials that I've found.

This is a software from one of our provider, and I know that the code
was ported from SUN microsystem to Linux to meet our requirements, there
are some statements with "ioctl" calls, do you think that this could be
an issue, as it bypass the ALSA api?

I know it seems vague, but I can try to send some part of the code with
ALSA (I think this is not a big issue, the only thing is I don't know
witch part could be interesting to send).

We also made some test with some usb sound cards with the same
hardware/software, and the sound look better.

Here the information you asked for:

Linux MASTER 2.4.21-99-default #1 Wed Sep 24 13:30:51 UTC 2003 i686 i686
i386 GNU/Linux

Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.5a.
Compiled on Jan 16 2006 for kernel 2.4.21-99-default with versioned
symols


-----Original Message-----
From: alsa-devel-admin@lists.sourceforge.net
[mailto:alsa-devel-admin@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Martin
Habets
Sent: Monday 09 January 2006 12:28
To: alsa-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Alsa-devel] Urgent question

On Mon, Jan 09, 2006 at 11:07:36AM +0100, PIVATY Bertrand wrote:
> The sound quality looks good when using the onboard sound card
provided,
> but when using any PCI sound card the sound quality is really poor.

Have you tried different PCI cards? Or is the issue with a specific
model or chipset?

> Do you have any idea of what could be the reason, or any track where
we
> should investigate.

The first obvious step is to figure out if it is an application problem
or a kernel/alsa issue. I usually run 'aplay' or 'speakertest' with a
simple
test file to figure that out.
If these work okay it's most likely an application problem.

> The software is running on Suse 9.0 with the last Alsa version.

This does not mean a whole lot to me. Could you send the kernel and alsa
version as reported by uname and /proc/asound/version?

-- 
Martin


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Nothing in this e-mail message amounts to a contractual or legal commitment on the part of EUROCONTROL unless it is confirmed by appropriately signed hard copy.

Any views expressed in this message are those of the sender.



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Re: Urgent question

[James Courtier-Dutton]

PIVATY Bertrand wrote:

>Hello all,
>
>Thanks for your quick reaction.
>
>aplay and speaker produce the same good quality on both onboard and PCI
>sound cards.
>
>It is indeed for us obvious that the problem is coming from the audio
>software.
>
>But when checking the source code, I didn't see anything special, I mean
>they mainly use the ALSA api, and it is basically looks like the
>different ALSA tutorials that I've found.
>
>This is a software from one of our provider, and I know that the code
>was ported from SUN microsystem to Linux to meet our requirements, there
>are some statements with "ioctl" calls, do you think that this could be
>an issue, as it bypass the ALSA api?
>
>I know it seems vague, but I can try to send some part of the code with
>ALSA (I think this is not a big issue, the only thing is I don't know
>witch part could be interesting to send).
>  
>
Output from this would help me.
cat /proc/asound/cards

As speaker-test worked fine, the problem will be due to one of 2 things.
1) Buffer and Period size setting.
It would be very useful to see how your app decides on buffer and period 
sizes. ALSA is somewhat different from other sound APIs, in that it does 
not hide the hardware buffer size from the user. I.e. You can only set 
buffer and period sizes that the sound card can actually support in 
hardware. Some extra care is therefore needed when deciding on buffer 
size. If I could see your source code with regard to buffer and period 
sizes, I could tell if this was the problem.

2) Sample rate.
If the sound card hardware can only do 48000Hz, and your sound 
application works at 44100Hz, there are certain circumstances where 
sound quality will suffer.
Here, if I knew which sound cards you were using, and the sample rate 
your application was using, I could help here.

Note:
I general fix to both the above problems would be to use a hardware 
mixing sound card.
e.g. SB Audigy  (Not LS or SE)  or a SB Live (not 24bit version)

Would it be acceptable to specifiy the sound card to use? I doubt that 
Air traffic control simulators have a very wide audience.

If you are not able to specify the sound card, there are software ways 
out of all the problems described above.

James



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