Re: [RFC] AXD Audio Processing IP ALSA support - Questions

[Qais Yousef <qais.yousef@imgtec.com>]

On 11/05/2014 08:38 AM, Vinod Koul wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 04, 2014 at 12:04:26PM +0000, Qais Yousef wrote:
>> On 11/04/2014 10:40 AM, Vinod Koul wrote:
>>> On Tue, Nov 04, 2014 at 09:48:18AM +0000, Qais Yousef wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I have several questions on the best way to add AXD support in ALSA.
>>> 1st rule pls CC maintainers, so that it gets rights attention.
>>>
>> OK sorry about that.
>>
>>>> The discussion of the previous patch can be found here:
>>>>
>>>> https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/10/28/465
>>>>
>>>> Questions:
>>>>
>>>> 1- What is the best example to follow to add a simple mp3 support
>>>> for AXD? The only one I find is in sst-mfld-platform-compress.c in
>>>> sound/soc/intel directory but it's a bit confusing. I think because
>>>> it's sharing code with several other sst drivers/platforms.
>>> There are two ways
>>> 1. If you are a ASoC driver which is most likely the case, then add a
>>> compress dai and then a compress dai-link. The device with compress device
>>> will be created.
>>> 2. Directly call compress_register the way asoc does
>>>
>>> For both you need to implement the compressed ops
>> Thanks for the pointers :)
>>
>>>> I find the documentation for compress_offload generally lacking. Is
>>>> there a plan to improve on that? Being a new comer to ALSA framework
>>>> api, I'm confused what is the correct way to do things :-/
>>> Are you talking about kernel API or driver API? Can you please elaborate
>> Driver API. A new section in 'Writing an ALSA Driver' for compress
>> offload would be helpful for example.
> Not really. I think Writing ASoC driver would help :)
> More I think of you issues, it seems to me that first you need to comprehend
> how ASoC works and model your device properly. The things like registers
> which were in last post would be modeled as ASoC widgets. Once you
> comprehend that then the compress is just a dai, dailink and ops addition.
>

I'm reading and writing more code and getting better grasp of the terms 
and structures/model :)

>> snd_compress_register() for example is not clear in what context it
>> needs to be called. I failed to find any reference to a user. In
>> your pointers above I was trying to do 1 and 2 simultaneously - I
>> didn't realise that 1 makes 2 unnecessary.
> If you are asoc driver then you do need to worry about it as based on
> dailinks, core will call this.
>
>> It might be that I just need to spend more time on it to get it.
>>
>>>> So far I know I need to call snd_soc_register_card(). I thought
>>>> snd_compress_register() (from compress_driver.h) is how you add
>>>> compressed nodes to the card but apparently not. It looks like I
>>>> need to define a compress_dai? Hmmm.
>>> You need to define a compress_dai if you are a asoc device just like the pcm
>>> dai's, it is similar to what you would need to do for PCM
>>>
>>>> 2- Is tinycompress the only userland support for compress_offload?
>>>> Is there anyone working on gstreamer and omx plugins to support
>>>> that?
>>> Yes, I don't know of anyone working on omx support.
>>>> Would tinycompress be part of alsa-utils and alsa-libs in the
>>>> future? I know it needs more work at the moment but it'd be nice if
>>>> compress_offload support is part of the standard alsa-utils and
>>>> alsa-libs.
>>> It is alsa-lib, for packaging we can make it part of alsa packages. Most
>>> users are right now in Android so no one asked yet
>> I'm using buildroot for my testing. So if it's included part of alsa
>> packages that would be helpful.
>> Also it'll help with getting gstreamer support.
>>
>>>> 3- Can we get an example of how transcoding (back to disk) is
>>>> supposed to be working?
>>> As I have replied to you last week, it would be done using two FEs and these
>>> FEs should be "routed"
>> OK. I need to read more to completely understand this to be honest.
>> I don't know what's an FE and I don't know how they can be 'routed'.
>> That's why I was hoping to get an example or a pointer to anything
>> that does a similar thing.
>> Just to clarify, all the necessary bits are there and I just need to
>> use them?
> Mostly yes, but if you have a typical example which doesnt work, we should
> be able to add support for that in framework.
> I think transcoding (FE-FE) should work like we have BE-BE loopback
> working today. Noone has built it for this usage and tested it. So I would
> expect some fixes to framework too.
>

OK understood. If it's only bug fixes then that's comparatively easier :)

Many thanks,
Qais