[PlanetCCRMA] RME 9652 - ALSA - Pulseaudio problems

Colin Guthrie gmane at colin.guthr.ie
Thu Apr 7 14:34:09 PDT 2011 

Hiya,

It would be great if you could write a "profile set" for this card.

Profile sets are particular "probing rules" that explain to PA exactly
how you want to work with a given card.

It's generally used for the more "pro" end of the market.

These profile sets can be written without recompiling PA, and can be
found in:
/usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/profile-sets

If you look in that folder you'll already see a few definitions:

default.conf
maudio-fasttrack-pro.conf
native-instruments-audio4dj.conf
native-instruments-audio8dj.conf
native-instruments-korecontroller.conf
native-instruments-traktor-audio10.conf
native-instruments-traktor-audio6.conf
native-instruments-traktorkontrol-s4.conf

(I'm running git master so I may have a few more than you)

You assign specific profiles to your card via udev rules:
/lib/udev/rules.d/90-pulseaudio.rules

The files should be (mostly) self contained with regards to how to
configure them (I'm not really an expert, but if you need help, please
post on the PA mailing list!)

If you managed to write a good profile-set that works to your
satisfaction, I'll be more than happy to include the patch upstream.

This might not be the only thing needed as things like default rates
etc. may need to be set in daemon.conf...

If this doesn't work, I'd still recommend keeping udev-detect, but
simply setting the card to Off profile before loading the sink directly
with the appropriate args. This way you still get hotplug support :)

Another tip to not mess with your system default.pa, you can do this in
your ~/.pulse/default.pa:

.include /etc/pulse/default.pa
; Do custom stuff below....
load-module module-alsa-sink......



Hope this helps.

Col

'Twas brillig, and Craig Bourne at 07/04/11 04:27 did gyre and gimble:
> Thanks, I followed this advice and now Pulseaudio is no longer carping.
> I will do further testing within the next week and report back in more
> detail. Meanwhile, here is the changed info in the  default.pa that I
> modeled on your example and the characteristics of the RME9652
> 
> ### manually load driver for HDSP Digiface
> 
> #load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:DSP sink_name=HDSP_PLAYBACK
> rate=48000 format=s32le tsched=0 channels=26
> channel_map=aux0,aux1,aux2,aux3,aux4,aux5,aux6,aux7,front-left,front-right,side-left,side-right,side-left,side-right,rear-left,rear-right,aux0,aux1
> load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:DSP sink_name=HDSP_PLAYBACK
> rate=48000 format=s32le tsched=0 channels=26
> channel_map=ch1,ch2,ch3,ch4,ch5,ch6,ch7,ch8,ch9,ch10,ch11,ch12,ch13,ch14,ch15,ch16,ch17,ch18,ch19,ch20,ch21,ch22,ch23,ch24,ch25,ch26
> 
> #load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:DSP source_name=HDSP_CAPTURE
> rate=48000 format=s32le tsched=0 channels=26
> channel_map=aux0,aux1,aux2,aux3,aux4,aux5,aux6,aux7,front-left,front-right,side-left,side-right,side-left,side-right,rear-left,rear-right,aux0,aux1
> load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:DSP source_name=HDSP_CAPTURE
> rate=48000 format=s32le tsched=0 channels=26
> channel_map=ch1,ch2,ch3,ch4,ch5,ch6,ch7,ch8,ch9,ch10,ch11,ch12,ch13,ch14,ch15,ch16,ch17,ch18,ch19,ch20,ch21,ch22,ch23,ch24,ch25,ch26
> 
> This has me wondering if support for our cards' higher sampling rate is
> as simple as using "rate=96000" and adjusting the number of channels.
> What do you think?
> 
> -- 
> Craig
> 
> PS Near as I can tell the designation HDSP is also valid for my card
> (though I would feel more comfortable if there were documentation to
> refer to so that I did not have to guess). Similarly (but with the same
> level of uncertainty) the hw designation DSP seems correct for my card too.
> 
> As to the question on the list to the effect "why use pulseaudio at
> all?" -- Outside of the Music and DAW chores there are a number of
> applications (audio file players, streaming audio, etc) that also use
> the sound card and it seems perfectly sensible to have them default to
> pulseaudio (once I repair my setup).
> 
> Colin Guthrie suggested moving from Fedora to a different distribution.
> System administration chores are easier for me on Fedora in that they
> still show their Unix origins more clearly that others (e.g., Ubuntu)
> and after several decades of habituating myself to that environment
> Fedora seems a better fit for me. While I remain confident that with
> your help I can repair the audio problems that plague my system, were
> that not the case, I would be more likely to reinstall Fedora with the
> 64 bit Intel kernel (for the general performance boost) than to switch
> to another 32 bit distribution on the off-chance that it might provide
> better audio support. (After all, if I could not have audio any way,
> what would I have to loose?)
> 
> 
> On 04/06/11 19:15, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
>> On 04/06/2011 03:18 PM, Craig Bourne wrote:
>>> Here are messages logged to /var/log/messages by pulseaudio:
>>
>> By default PA can't use an RME card out of the box as it can't find a
>> default mapping for all the available channels. There is a workaround
>> that involves telling it explicitly. I'm attaching a file that I use
>> for our RME Multiface II cards.
>>
>> Note that you will need to adjust number of channels and name of the
>> soundcard to match what you have...
>>
>> -- Fernando
>>
>>
>>> Apr  6 16:49:59 speedy pulseaudio[2312]: module-alsa-card.c: Failed
>>> to find a working profile.
>>> Apr  6 16:49:59 speedy pulseaudio[2312]: module.c: Failed to load 
>>> module"module-alsa-card"  (argument:"device_id="0" 
>>> name="pci-0000_02_00.0"  card_name="alsa_card.pci-0000_02_00.0" 
>>> tsched=yes ignore_dB=no
>>> card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1""): initialization
>>> failed.
>>>
>>> Apr  6 16:50:00 speedy pulseaudio[2312]: module-alsa-card.c: Failed
>>> to find a working profile.
>>> Apr  6 16:50:00 speedy pulseaudio[2312]: module.c: Failed to load 
>>> module"module-alsa-card"  (argument:"device_id="0" 
>>> name="pci-0000_02_00.0"  card_name="alsa_card.pci-0000_02_00.0" 
>>> tsched=yes ignore_dB=no
>>> card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1""): initialization
>>> failed.
>>>
>>> Apr  6 16:50:00 speedy pulseaudio[2312]: module-alsa-card.c: Failed
>>> to find a working profile.
>>> Apr  6 16:50:00 speedy pulseaudio[2312]: module.c: Failed to load 
>>> module"module-alsa-card"  (argument:"device_id="0" 
>>> name="pci-0000_02_00.0"  card_name="alsa_card.pci-0000_02_00.0" 
>>> tsched=yes ignore_dB=no
>>> card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1""): initialization
>>> failed.
>>>
>>> Apr  6 16:50:00 speedy pulseaudio[2312]: module-alsa-card.c: Failed
>>> to find a working profile.
>>> Apr  6 16:50:00 speedy pulseaudio[2312]: module.c: Failed to load 
>>> module"module-alsa-card"  (argument:"device_id="0" 
>>> name="pci-0000_02_00.0"  card_name="alsa_card.pci-0000_02_00.0" 
>>> tsched=yes ignore_dB=no
>>> card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1""): initialization
>>> failed.
>>>
>>> Apr  6 16:50:00 speedy pulseaudio[2312]: module-alsa-card.c: Failed
>>> to find a working profile.
>>> Apr  6 16:50:00 speedy pulseaudio[2312]: module.c: Failed to load 
>>> module"module-alsa-card"  (argument:"device_id="0" 
>>> name="pci-0000_02_00.0"  card_name="alsa_card.pci-0000_02_00.0" 
>>> tsched=yes ignore_dB=no
>>> card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1""): initialization
>>> failed.
>>>
>>> Apr  6 16:50:00 speedy pulseaudio[2312]: module-alsa-card.c: Failed
>>> to find a working profile.
>>> Apr  6 16:50:00 speedy pulseaudio[2312]: module.c: Failed to load 
>>> module"module-alsa-card"  (argument:"device_id="0" 
>>> name="pci-0000_02_00.0"  card_name="alsa_card.pci-0000_02_00.0" 
>>> tsched=yes ignore_dB=no
>>> card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1""): initialization
>>> failed.
>>>
>>> Apr  6 16:50:00 speedy pulseaudio[2312]: module-udev-detect.c: Tried
>>> to configure
>>> /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1e.0/0000:02:00.0/sound/card0
>>> (alsa_card.pci-0000_02_00.0) more often than 5 times in 10s
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> PlanetCCRMA at ccrma.stanford.edu
>> http://ccrma-mail.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/planetccrma


-- 

Colin Guthrie
gmane(at)colin.guthr.ie
http://colin.guthr.ie/

Day Job:
  Tribalogic Limited [http://www.tribalogic.net/]
Open Source:
  Mageia Contributor [http://www.mageia.org/]
  PulseAudio Hacker [http://www.pulseaudio.org/]
  Trac Hacker [http://trac.edgewall.org/]

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