Hi,
> 1) Don't make users fight so hard to simply recognize and utilize a sound
> card!? For goodness sake, this software is
> about playing audio!?
>
I have to admit, while testing Rivendell on different distributions I've had
frustrations with it to get audio to play.
It can be a challenge at times.
What I have learned is it usually gets down to stuff in the distribution and
how audio gets handled. After some levels
of frustration I've found a few items which help.
The best approach, when starting out - is to use straight ALSA. Figure out if
the distro you are using has any of the
other audio layers installed, and get rid of (or turn off) the rest.
1. If the system has Pulseaudio on it, then disable it (this is what Ubuntu
uses as its default - fortunately ALSA is
also installed by default, so you just have to disable pulseaudio). Often it
isn't easy to remove it entirely (and on
some distributions if you try and remove it you'll end up breaking something
else). But is usually is possible to
disable it. This involves finding the pulse.conf file and adding the
autospawn=no option, also going into the
auto-start setup for that distribution and turning it off there too. Often you
have to do both of these, or else it'll
find a way to turn itself back on. Pulseaudio might be okay for a desktop
system, but in a broadcast setting in my
experience it can just cause problems.
2. If you have Jack turned on - at least until you get audio playing out in
Rivendell, turn it off. Once you get the
system working, then if you have a need for Jack you can set it up.
One difficulty with Jack that hit me the other day (and admittedly it was one
of the Ubuntu - Rivendell setup PDF's that
provided the answer and resolution for me) - if the system sees Caed, RipCD,
and RDCatchd running under a different user
/ group then Jack, then Jack doesn't see Rivendell. Even if you can get
Rivendell working under ALSA, it just won't
show up in Jack. It all gets down to permissions, users, and groups. It can be
solved, but that's in part why I suggest
getting it working under plain ALSA first.
3. If system sounds are enabled on your distribution, disable them. When
playing audio on-air you won't want these
anyways, and sometimes even if you've disabled audio layers other then ALSA the
system sounds will start those layers
back up (one distribution release in particular I found that the system sounds
were firing up pulseaudio even though it
had been turned off / disabled!). Also sometimes system sounds are not all in
the same place - for example on Ubuntu
you have to look in the Sounds setup option, there's also a setup for System
Beeps (another tab in the sounds setup
area), and finally hidden on the Login setup screen there is an option to play
audio at the login prompt that also needs
to be turned off. Why they couldn't have put all of this on a single screen I
don't understand.
4. Assuming your system is defaulting to ALSA and can see the audio card, you
can try RDALSACONFIG - it is a good tool -
but for testing with an onboard card I've generally had best luck with a simple
/etc/asound.conf file like:
pcm.rd0 {
type hw
card 0
}
ctl.rd0 {
type hw
card 0
}
One thing that I did find with the asound.conf file and testing with onboard
sound. Depending on what onboard sound
card you have, you might need to set the sample rate you want to use within
asound.conf for the onboard sound to work
(I've found Intel based sound chipsets are bad for this). It seems that for
some reason the card doesn't always get set
to the same sample rate as caed, and it just doesn't work correctly. The fix is
simple, just add another line to
asound.conf, example:
pcm.rd0
{
type hw
card 0
rate 48000
}
ctl.rd0 {
type hw
card 0
}
and restart the Rivendell daemons. Also make sure the sample rate in rdadmin
is set to the same rate as you've set in
the file.
5. This may be stating the obvious, but make sure your sound card hasn't been
set to "mute" or the volume levels very
low. alsamixer can be a huge help here.
It is definitely possible to get things working on any of the distributions
you've tried, but as you've found sometimes
it can be a challenge. I do agree with the earlier post - it has more to do
with the mess of different audio layers
that exist within the Linux world and get picked for different distributions
then anything else.
My thoughts regarding Jack - it is great if you need to be able to run
additional audio applications on the same box as
Rivendell. If you want to both play out your audio and send it to an internet
stream (for example) or be able to run an
audio editing app on the same workstation (in a production/editing studio
environment), then Jack is the best option.
But if the system is going to be a stand-alone playout system in an on-air
studio and not be used for other audio based
stuff then in my own opinion you're better off with just plain ALSA. I'm sure
some people will disagree with me, but my
own own view is that the less stuff that is stuck into the audio layer on the
main playout system the better.
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