Jeremy has correctly answered many of the points/questions you
raise. I will try to finish off the story :)
>problem is that I cannot get the mixer to have any "elements" (or
>"elems" as the alsamixer calls them) which thus makes the card
>un-openable even with the alsamixer.
there is no mixer. neither alsamixer nor any other "volume control"
mixer has any role with this card.
>2) What are limitations of this kind of D/A conversion, as opposed to
>the external D/A converter?
whatever the specs on the brackets. they are probably not quite as
good as an external unit, but fairly adequate. i hope you understand
that you can only get 8 channels of i/o via the RME internal
converters. i don't know why RME designed it this way, but their
converters use an internal cable, and there is only one hookup per
Hammerfall.
>3) My green led light on the additional bracket that has WC in/out (it
>came with the soundcard) is off. Is this ok?
WC is irrevelant unless you want to use it. the green light just shows
a WC signal is present.
>ADAT1 Input source: ADAT1 optical
there are several choices for this, and as jeremy notes, if you're
using one of RME brackets for D/A, it needs to be set to use the
internal connector.
>Now, here I can see there is not ADAT lock, but that should be fine
>since I am using internal A/D D/A brackets, right?
no, its not fine. you should see "sync" here when things are connected
correctly and there is a correct signal being received.
>What is strange about this one is that all of the channels are muted or
>off (whatever that means), but then again, I cannot find rme's mixer to
no, thats not what it said. look again:
Punch Status:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1: off 2: off 3: off 4: off 5: off 6: off 7: off 8: off
9: off 10: off 11: off 12: off 13: off 14: off 15: off 16: off
17: off 18: off 19: off 20: off 21: off 22: off 23: off 24: off
25: off 26: off
this means that none of the channels have been set to do h/w-based
"zero latency monitoring", which does a direct connect of each channel
input to the corresponding output, with 1 sample delay. thats all.
i should change the label on this entry :)
>unmute them, so it seems like this is a "catch-22" situation.
you use alsactl or amixer to adjust PCM switches ("controls") on all
ALSA cards. the Hammerfall is just the same.
>(this tells me that there are values for the rme9652 mixer but why are
>they inaccessible even to the alsamixer?)
no, there are no controls that would be used by alsamixer.
>1) How come there is a "mixer10" reported in sndstat and there are
>values in the /etc/asound.state, yet the rest of the system is not
>capable of accessing it, not even alsamixer?
its lying. i don't know why. sndstat is redundant, but it should be
honest :) i don't know what code in ALSA is responsible for claiming
there is a mixer. it might do this for any card with a "control"
device on it, which is misleading.
>2) Is this somehow related to the fact I am using the brackets instead
>of external D/A converter? If so, what do I need to do to make them
>work?
no, its not related. you just need to set the ADAT1 input source.
>3) There is a screenshot of a gui-app for controlling hammerfall on
>RME's website (under linux support) that resembles windows interface.
>What is this app and where can I obtain it? Also will using it solve my
>problem?
i do not distribute this application any more and i intend to ask RME
to remove it from the page. there is no role for this application
IMHO, even though i wrote it. its design is a symptom of the way
windows/macos "drivers" work, where applications don't do much with
the h/w setup, and there is no "system wide" control application. as a
result, each "driver" ships with 1 or more utility functions to
control the h/w setup.
ALSA isn't like that. we *do* have system-wide tools, though at this
time, they are text-based (alsactl, and to some extent, amixer too).
>4) What the heck am I doing wrong? :-)
you haven't set the ADAT1 input source, and you believe there should
be a mixer. thats all, i think.
>Apologies to all for the long e-mail, I do not mean to hog everyone's
>inboxes, but I just wanted to provide as much pertinent info as possible
>so that the solution can be more easily found, thus minimizing further
>redundant forwarding of the e-mail.
messages like this need to be in the archive so that others can find
them and i don't have to write them again :)
let me know if you have more questions.
--p
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