Re: Slight New Sound Problem
T.J. Duchene writes: Martin, I'm sorry you had problems with my suggestion. Most often, these problems have to be handled by trial and error. I'm afraid I can only offer advice based on my own experience and the fact you mentioned you were using Pulseaudio. I assumed you had it already installed and was using it. So did I. If you hadn't gotten me checking in to pulseaudio, I'd still think it was actually doing something useful. Thanks for the assistance as it is just as important to know what isn't a factor as it is to know what is. Martin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140920113929.a842622...@server1.shellworld.net
Re: Slight New Sound Problem
Chris Bannister writes: I reckon the guys on the 'linux-audio-user' (http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user) mailing list would be the ideal place for help with this. Probably so. I've exhausted all the obvious solutions now. Thank you. Martin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140920114632.8f9eb22...@server1.shellworld.net
Re: Slight New Sound Problem
T.J. Duchene writes: Pulseaudio has had a long history of being poorly handling certain audio chipset drivers, I'm afraid. You may be able to solve your problem by adjusting the the driver parameters in the file: /etc/pulse/default.pa. The more I dig in to this, the less I know. Back in 2009 or so, I upgraded the system in question to squeeze and I remember discovering that /dev/dsp had gone away so I was advised to install pulseaudio. I've slept a few nights since May of 2009 so I do not remember everything that happened but I imagine I did apt-get install pulseaudio. I did get /dev/dsp back and have successfully used it ever since. I now have two sound cards so there is /dev/dsp and /dev/dsp1 and they mostly work except for the glitches. Alsa is also here and I think that is what is really working. There was no /etc/pulse/default.pa and no executable file named pulseaudio anywhere on the system as well as no man page for pulseaudio. So, I decided to purge pulseaudio and start over as there was a libpulseaudio on the system and /etc/pulse/client.conf. apt-get reported that pulseaudio was not installed so I couldn't purge it so I did apt-get install pulseaudio and got it. This brought more files in to /etc/pulse including the default.pa file and the executable for pulseaudio and it's man page. pulseaudio can be started and runs and has no effect on the glitches nor does it break anything. It's just another running process. It appears that pulseaudio can be an audio server and do many things but I am not sure how it is supposed to fit in to the scheme of things. There is no native .pulse directory in my home directory and, when I made one, nothing appeared there even after I briefly ran pulseaudio. This system goes back to the lenny distribution and it's sound was, at one time, 100% derived from alsa. /dev/dsp always blocks if you feed it more than one source so I am wondering if there is some old legacy configuration file gumming up the works. Sound basically works on this system with the exception of the random glitches. If not for those, I would still think that pulseaudio was running when it really wasn't here. Like various famous people of our past have reportedly said, It ain't what you don't know that can hurt you but what you do know that just ain't so. Martin McCormick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140919113013.c6a9222...@server1.shellworld.net
Re: Slight New Sound Problem
On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 06:30:13AM -0500, Martin G. McCormick wrote: T.J. Duchene writes: Pulseaudio has had a long history of being poorly handling certain audio chipset drivers, I'm afraid. You may be able to solve your problem by adjusting the the driver parameters in the file: /etc/pulse/default.pa. The more I dig in to this, the less I know. Back in 2009 or so, I upgraded the system in question to squeeze and I remember discovering that /dev/dsp had gone away so I was I reckon the guys on the 'linux-audio-user' (http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user) mailing list would be the ideal place for help with this. -- If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. --- Malcolm X -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140919162147.GD29400@tal
re: Slight New Sound Problem
Martin, I'm sorry you had problems with my suggestion. Most often, these problems have to be handled by trial and error. I'm afraid I can only offer advice based on my own experience and the fact you mentioned you were using Pulseaudio. I assumed you had it already installed and was using it. As to the suggestion by others that the discussion would better be served on the audio list, perhaps they are right, but I do not agree. I think that the Debian users list should handle Debian problems, but my opinion hardly matters. If you want to follow this up off the list, you are welcome to email me. I seldom post to the Debian user lists these days. Take care, T.J. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140919230534.0f17c...@workstation.lan
Re: Slight New Sound Problem
On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 21:32:27 -0500 Martin G. McCormick mar...@server1.shellworld.net wrote: Thanks for any constructive ideas. Did you try with another kernel? Kind regards -- http://markorandjelovic.hopto.org One should not be afraid of humans. Well, I am not afraid of humans, but of what is inhuman in them. Ivo Andric, Signs near the travel-road -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140918083941.04d3e...@sbb.rs
Re: Slight New Sound Problem
Marko Randjelovic writes: Did you try with another kernel? Well, indirectly. As I mentioned, the system has always exhibited this behavior slightly for several years through a number of kernels. The biggest change, though, was when I changed out the conventional 10 GB hard drive for a slightly larger flash drive that was also about 15 years newer. I think it is some sort of bus contention problem. The system has two IDE controllers. One has the boot drive on the master position plus a second conventional hard drive on the slave position for /home. The other IDE controller has a CDRW drive in the master position and a second CDRW drive in slave. I can always make the sound problem worse by doing disk-intensive activity on the controller that has the two fixed disk drives. The system kernel changed in May and there was no noticeable change then that could be tied to the new kernal. Thanks for the good question. It made me think differently. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140918111400.d863b22...@server1.shellworld.net
Re: Slight New Sound Problem
T.J. Duchene writes: Good morning, Martin! Before I can make suggestions, I need to know if you are using a daemon such as Jack or PulseAudio or if you are using ALSA directly. Thanks, I am using pulseaudio and alsa. Normally, if I am listening to something it is through mplayer but aplay also is effected by the problem. It seems that any high-quality audio application now is showing the glitches. As an example, I wrote a C program a few years ago that turns the sound card in to a variable-length audio delay. When OSU has a football game on both TV and radio, we want to hear our home sports announcers and see the game on TV. Usually, the radio is 10 to 20 seconds ahead of the video and my trusty delay makes it possible to get them both synced. The card is set to a 32000 sample-per-second rate and /dev/dsp is opened for writing at the start of the program. The read pointer is set to a character in the buffer that is far enough away to equal the needed delay. the write and read pointers chase each other round and round the buffer. I can now hear the glitches on that application, also. A hint to the wise, if you write a delay like this you had better write half-level silence values to the ring buffer when initializing the program or you will hear seconds of extremely loud static thundering out of the speakers until the read pointer finally sees output from the sound card. With the initialized buffer, you hear nothing until sound comes out. Martin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140918155811.a3e2522...@server1.shellworld.net
Re: Slight New Sound Problem
On Thu, 18 Sep 2014 06:14:00 -0500 Martin G. McCormick mar...@server1.shellworld.net wrote: Marko Randjelovic writes: Did you try with another kernel? Well, indirectly. As I mentioned, the system has always exhibited this behavior slightly for several years through a number of kernels. The biggest change, though, was when I changed out the conventional 10 GB hard drive for a slightly larger flash drive that was also about 15 years newer. I think it is some sort of bus contention problem. The system has two IDE controllers. One has the boot drive on the master position plus a second conventional hard drive on the slave position for /home. The other IDE controller has a CDRW drive in the master position and a second CDRW drive in slave. I can always make the sound problem worse by doing disk-intensive activity on the controller that has the two fixed disk drives. If I were you I would download kernel source to experiment with relevant kernel options, but first try: 1. use hdparm to see if your hard drives support DMA and if it is activated; 2. change IO scheduler to 'deadline' by adding to kernel boot line elevator=deadline. Kind regards -- http://markorandjelovic.hopto.org One should not be afraid of humans. Well, I am not afraid of humans, but of what is inhuman in them. Ivo Andric, Signs near the travel-road -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140918192558.4dcbd...@sbb.rs
Re: Slight New Sound Problem
Pulseaudio has had a long history of being poorly handling certain audio chipset drivers, I'm afraid. You may be able to solve your problem by adjusting the the driver parameters in the file: /etc/pulse/default.pa. You will need to have administrator permission to do this. Be sure to make a backup copy of the file before you make changes, just in case. Edit the line: load-module module-udev-detect and add tsched=0 so it will be: load-module module-udev-detect tsched=0 Save it, and then preferably reboot, just to be on the safe side. Don't worry, this parameter should be perfectly safe to use. It will force PulseAudio try to not bulldoze over the sound driver's timing by forcing the scheduler to 0. As a last resort to fix problems with PA, I've backported a newer version from Sid to Debian Stable, but I don't recommend that unless you really and fully understand what you are getting into. It can cause problems.
