Re: [RFC PATCH 1/6] ALSA: compress: add Sample Rate Converter codec support

[Pierre-Louis Bossart <pierre-louis.bossart@linux.intel.com>]

On 8/14/24 13:12, Shengjiu Wang wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 5:40 PM Pierre-Louis Bossart
> <pierre-louis.bossart@linux.intel.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Yes, to go further, I think we can use SND_AUDIOCODEC_PCM, then
>>> the SRC type will be dropped.
>>
>> sounds good.
>>
>>> But my understanding of the control means the .set_metadata() API, right?
>>> As I said, the output rate, output format, and ratio modifier are applied to
>>> the instances of ASRC,  which is the snd_compr_stream in driver.
>>> so only the .set_metadata() API can be used for these purposes.
>>
>> Humm, this is more controversial.
>>
>> The term 'metadata' really referred to known information present in
>> headers or additional ID3 tags and not in the compressed file itself.
>> The .set_metadata was assumed to be called ONCE before decoding.
>>
>> But here you have a need to update the ratio modifier on a regular basis
>> to compensate for the drift. This isn't what this specific callback was
>> designed for. We could change and allow this callback to be used
>> multiple times, but then this could create problems for existing
>> implementations which cannot deal with modified metadata on the fly.
> 
> .set_metadata can be called multi times now, no need to change currently.

Not really, this set_metadata() callback is used only for gapless
transitions between tracks, see fcplay.c in tinycompress.

And now I am really confused because tinycompress uses an IOCTL directly:

	metadata.key = SNDRV_COMPRESS_ENCODER_PADDING;
	metadata.value[0] = mdata->encoder_padding;
	if (ioctl(compress->fd, SNDRV_COMPRESS_SET_METADATA, &metadata))

Whereas you want to use the ops callback directly from the control layer?

What would present a userspace program from using the ioctl directly
then? In that case, why do we need the control? I must be missing something.


>> And then there's the problem of defining a 'key' for the metadata. the
>> definition of the key is a u32, so there's plenty of space for different
>> implementations, but a collision is possible. We'd need an agreement on
>> how to allocate keys to different solutions without changing the header
>> file for every implementation.
> 
> Can we define a private space for each case?   For example the key larger
> than 0x80000000 is private, each driver can define it by themself?

that would be a possibility indeed - provided that the opens above are
straightened out.

>> It sounds like we'd need a 'runtime params' callback - unless there's a
>> better trick to tie the control and compress layers?