[PlanetCCRMA] Basic Newbie stuff

Mon Sep 6 12:48:11 PDT 2010

On Mon, 2010-09-06 at 15:05 -0400, Lloyd Hanson wrote:
> Sorry for the late reply, but I hate posting spurious information, so I 
> have wanted to test everything twice to verify what I've been doing.
> 
> My problems with jackd were largely self inflicted.  I was starting it 
> from the command line and mistakenly thought it was refusing to start.  
> So I was then bringing up Qjackctl and of course it wouldn't start 
> either as there was already an instance of jackd running.
> 
> The epiphany came when I d/l Hydrogen for testing as per Fernando's 
> suggestion.  Thank you Fernando!   I opened it and suddenly had sound.  
> This surprised me because I figured I shouldn't have anything if jackd 
> wasn't running (I hadn't started it).  But I found a copy running, which 
> turned out to be a temporary copy that Hydrogen had started.
> 
> Linux has been on several of my computers for a very long time, but I've 
> never explored the audio subsystems in any depth. Mainly, I used them 
> for file and web serving and little else.  In that sense I am so far 
> behind the curve it's ridiculous.
> 
> But I now have audio through jack, which is my main goal.  Now I just 
> have to figure out how to get audio through the card for the routine 
> stuff, like the web browser, flash player, etc.

Ah, ok. That requires some customization because of your particular
soundcard, it's been a long standing "bug"... Pulseaudio (which is the
subsystem that handles audio in Fedora when you are not using jack) does
not find a configuration for this soundcard and does not use it. There
are several ways to fix this, the newest I have been trying is (from one
of my ticket logs):

--------
On Fri Jul 30 10:35:16 2010, nando wrote:
> There is now a new way to configure multichannel soundcards so that
> they work with pulseaudio, see:
> 
> http://pulseaudio.org/ticket/624
> 
> and comment #52 in:
> 
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/178442
> 
> We need to configure this in our workstations and add all the stuff to
> normalize (we currently do this for the ice1712 cards but not for the
> rme cards). 

Created a udev rule in:

/lib/udev/rules.d/91-pulseaudio-extra.rules

Create ice1712 configuration file in:

/usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/profile-sets/via-ice1712.conf
--------

(I'm attaching the two files that I am using, maybe they will work for
the 1010lt, I don't know). 

Then you could use the "Sound Preferences" applet to see what pulseaudio
sees in your system (you may need to reboot or restart pulseaudio - then
right click on the speaker in the top panel in your desktop if you are
using gnome) and select the default sink and source for an application.
Things are not so easy, see:

http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/DefaultDevice

What I did in my test machine was to disable the onboard soundcard in
the BIOS so that Pulse does not have any options and always selects the
Delta 66 (the card in my machine). 

-- Fernando

> Niels, I will try mudita 24 in the not too distant future, but I need to 
> walk before I can run.  I have yet to install the real-time kernel and 
> fully avail myself of the gifts that Fernando and company have made 
> available to the community.
> 
> Thank you all for your responses.  I'm sure that as I move up the 
> learning curve, I'll be back to pick the excellent minds that frequent 
> the planet!

-------------- next part --------------
# Extra udev rules for PulseAudio.
#

SUBSYSTEM!="sound", GOTO="pulseaudio_end"
ACTION!="change", GOTO="pulseaudio_end"
KERNEL!="card*", GOTO="pulseaudio_end"

SUBSYSTEMS=="pci", ATTRS{vendor}=="0x1412", ATTRS{device}=="0x1712", ENV{PULSE_PROFILE_SET}="via-ice1712.conf"

LABEL="pulseaudio_end"
-------------- next part --------------
# This file is part of PulseAudio.
#
# PulseAudio is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as
# published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the
# License, or (at your option) any later version.
#
# PulseAudio is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
# General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
# along with PulseAudio; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
# Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA.

; Via ICE1712 multi-channel audio chipset
;
; This chipset has up to four stereo pairs of input and four stereo pairs of
; output, named channels 1 to 8. Also available are separate S/PDIF stereo
; channels (input and output), and a separate "system-out" stereo jack that
; supports 6-channel hardware mixing.
;
; The S/PDIF stereo channels can be controlled via the mixer for hw:0, and
; additionally, the 8 main outputs can be loop-routed to a separate stereo
; input pair, available as channels 11 and 12.
;
; Many cards available from vendors do not expose all channels from this chip
; to an external port, which effectively reduces the number of channels that
; are useful to the user. However, the ALSA driver still exposes all channels
; even if they are not connected.
;
; We knowingly only define a subset of the theoretically possible
; mapping combinations as profiles here.
;
; See default.conf for an explanation on the directives used here.

[General]
auto-profiles = no

[Mapping analog-mch-in]
description = Analog Multi-Channel Main Input
device-strings = hw:%f,0
#channel-map = front-left,front-right,rear-left,rear-right,front-center,lfe,side-left,side-right,aux0,aux1,aux2,aux3
channel-map = aux0,aux1,front-left,front-right,aux2,aux3,aux4,aux5,aux6,aux7,aux8,aux9
direction = input
priority = 1000

[Mapping analog-mch-out]
description = Analog Multi-Channel Main Output
device-strings = hw:%f,0
#channel-map = front-left,front-right,rear-left,rear-right,front-center,lfe,side-left,side-right,aux0,aux1
channel-map = front-left,front-right,aux0,aux1,aux2,aux3,aux4,aux5,aux6,aux7
direction = output
priority = 1000

[Mapping digital-stereo]
description = Digital Stereo Input/Output
#device-strings = hw:%f,1
device-strings = iec958:%f
channel-map = left,right
direction = any

[Mapping analog-system-out]
description = Analog Stereo System-Out
device-strings = hw:%f,2
channel-map = left,right
direction = output

[Profile output:mch]
description = Multi-Channel Output Active (Digital Disabled)
output-mappings = analog-mch-out analog-system-out
input-mappings =
skip-probe = yes
priority = 19998

[Profile output:mch+input:mch]
description = Multi-Channel Input/Output (Digital Disabled)
output-mappings = analog-mch-out analog-system-out
input-mappings = analog-mch-in
skip-probe = yes
priority = 19999

[Profile output:spdif]
description = Digital Output (Multi-Channel Disabled)
output-mappings = digital-stereo analog-system-out
input-mappings =
priority = 80
skip-probe = yes

[Profile output:spdif+input:spdif]
description = Digital Input/Output (Multi-Channel Disabled)
output-mappings = digital-stereo analog-system-out
input-mappings = digital-stereo
priority = 90
skip-probe = yes

[Profile output:system]
description = System Output Only
output-mappings = analog-system-out
input-mappings =
priority = 60
skip-probe = yes