* No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?
@ 2013-01-16 19:26 Rene Herman
2013-01-16 20:52 ` Clemens Ladisch
0 siblings, 1 reply; 12+ messages in thread
From: Rene Herman @ 2013-01-16 19:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: alsa-devel
Good day.
I'm out of touch of with alsa -- but should dmix/dsnoop still be enabled
by default on hardware that doesn't do hardware mixing?
It seems it isn't on my Intel ICH4:
$ cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [ICH5 ]: ICH4 - Intel ICH5
Intel ICH5 with AD1980 at irq 17
1 [SAA7134 ]: SAA7134 - SAA7134
saa7134[0] at 0xe8200000 irq 22
I believe that it should be from /usr/share/alsa/cards/ICH4.conf, but I
don't get mixing on this setup when using the "default" pcm...
(which I may not mind at that much, but I was looking at some other
sound-related problem and this has me rather confused)
This is arch linux, with alsa-lib, -plugins and -utils 1.0.26 installed,
using kernel 3.6.11-1-ARCH (ie, standard).
Regards,
Rene
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread* Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default? 2013-01-16 19:26 No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default? Rene Herman @ 2013-01-16 20:52 ` Clemens Ladisch 2013-01-17 10:22 ` libao problem (Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?) Rene Herman 0 siblings, 1 reply; 12+ messages in thread From: Clemens Ladisch @ 2013-01-16 20:52 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Rene Herman; +Cc: alsa-devel Rene Herman wrote: > I'm out of touch of with alsa -- but should dmix/dsnoop still be enabled by default on hardware that doesn't do hardware mixing? Yes. > I believe that it should be from /usr/share/alsa/cards/ICH4.conf, but I don't get mixing on this setup when using the "default" pcm... What's the output of "aplay -v something.wav"? Regards, Clemens ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* libao problem (Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?) 2013-01-16 20:52 ` Clemens Ladisch @ 2013-01-17 10:22 ` Rene Herman 2013-01-17 12:12 ` Clemens Ladisch 0 siblings, 1 reply; 12+ messages in thread From: Rene Herman @ 2013-01-17 10:22 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Clemens Ladisch; +Cc: alsa-devel, vorbis-dev On 16-01-13 21:52, Clemens Ladisch wrote: > Rene Herman wrote: >> I'm out of touch of with alsa -- but should dmix/dsnoop still be >> enabled by default on hardware that doesn't do hardware mixing? > > Yes. > >> I believe that it should be from /usr/share/alsa/cards/ICH4.conf, >> but I don't get mixing on this setup when using the "default" >> pcm... > > What's the output of "aplay -v something.wav"? I won't bother you with that, since things do in fact work with aplay. It seems I'm looking at a libao problem. Specifically: I can mix as many streams as I want using just "aplay" but if I start by playing one track with "ogg123" (which uses a default, unconfigured libao as its backend), I can't start a second ogg123, which then says: === ao_alsa WARNING: Unable to open surround playback. Trying default device... ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1018:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave ao_alsa ERROR: Unable to open ALSA device 'default' for playback => Device or resource busy ERROR: Cannot open device alsa. === I CAN still start an "aplay" at this point though. Moreover, things get weirder when I start with aplay. With one aplay running, I CAN start two additional ogg123 instances. ... so, err, ehm, err, what? :-) This now seems at best related to ALSA in a secondary manner, and I'm CCing this to vorbis-dev (which I believe is the right email contact for libao?) but if you know of something of interest... For vorbis-dev: this is on arch linux, (standard) kernel 3.6.11-1-ARCH, alsa-{lib,plugins,utils}-1.0.26-1, libao-1.1.0-2 and vorbis-tools-1.4.0-3. Regards, Rene ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: libao problem (Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?) 2013-01-17 10:22 ` libao problem (Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?) Rene Herman @ 2013-01-17 12:12 ` Clemens Ladisch 2013-01-17 12:44 ` Rene Herman 0 siblings, 1 reply; 12+ messages in thread From: Clemens Ladisch @ 2013-01-17 12:12 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Rene Herman; +Cc: alsa-devel, vorbis-dev Rene Herman wrote: > I can mix as many streams as I want using just "aplay" but if I start > by playing one track with "ogg123" (which uses a default, unconfigured > libao as its backend), I can't start a second ogg123, which then says: > > ao_alsa WARNING: Unable to open surround playback. Trying default device... The default dmix is for stereo only. For a surround dmix device, you'd have to write your own definition. Regards, Clemens ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: libao problem (Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?) 2013-01-17 12:12 ` Clemens Ladisch @ 2013-01-17 12:44 ` Rene Herman 2013-03-07 8:20 ` [Vorbis-dev] " xiphmont 0 siblings, 1 reply; 12+ messages in thread From: Rene Herman @ 2013-01-17 12:44 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Clemens Ladisch; +Cc: alsa-devel, vorbis-dev On 17-01-13 13:12, Clemens Ladisch wrote: > Rene Herman wrote: >> I can mix as many streams as I want using just "aplay" but if I start >> by playing one track with "ogg123" (which uses a default, unconfigured >> libao as its backend), I can't start a second ogg123, which then says: >> >> ao_alsa WARNING: Unable to open surround playback. Trying default device... > > The default dmix is for stereo only. For a surround dmix device, you'd > have to write your own definition. Thank you. I didn't notice it was related due to the "trying default device" which I thought should've worked but the issue is that libao 1.1.0 doesn't use the alsa "default" device by default. The first ogg123 instance therefore keeps things busy. There's a matching bug-rapport here, I see: https://trac.xiph.org/ticket/1776 I can, now, set it to dev=default manually but what this means is that libao-1.1.0 by default kills alsa default software mixing. These days everybody seems to have regressed to using a soundserver again anyway and as such not many may notice, but this izz no good, I feel... :-/ In any case, hope this was useful to alsa-devel in the sense that this libao behavior is now known here, but this is otherwise libao related only, then. Regards, Rene ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: [Vorbis-dev] libao problem (Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?) 2013-01-17 12:44 ` Rene Herman @ 2013-03-07 8:20 ` xiphmont 2013-03-24 17:25 ` Rene Herman 0 siblings, 1 reply; 12+ messages in thread From: xiphmont @ 2013-03-07 8:20 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Rene Herman; +Cc: alsa-devel, vorbis-dev, Clemens Ladisch > I can, now, set it to dev=default manually but what this means is that > libao-1.1.0 by default kills alsa default software mixing. The only alternative is to have any attempt at playing surround always fail to play more than stereo on a default setup. The bug reports about _that_ prompted the change to the current behavior. > These days > everybody seems to have regressed to using a soundserver again anyway Part of the reason for that is that ALSA provides so precious little in the way of programmatic configuration discovery. So far as I can tell, each and every user gets to script/configure his own setup, and then also explicitly configure the applications what to do. Applications can't even tell if a default setup is in use. It's all plug-n-pray. If that's not the case, I'd love to hear about it. I agree the current behavior sucks. Monty ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: [Vorbis-dev] libao problem (Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?) 2013-03-07 8:20 ` [Vorbis-dev] " xiphmont @ 2013-03-24 17:25 ` Rene Herman 2013-03-24 18:00 ` [alsa-devel] " xiphmont 0 siblings, 1 reply; 12+ messages in thread From: Rene Herman @ 2013-03-24 17:25 UTC (permalink / raw) To: xiphmont; +Cc: alsa-devel, vorbis-dev, Clemens Ladisch On 07-03-13 09:20, xiphmont@xiph.org wrote: >> I can, now, set it to dev=default manually but what this means is >> that libao-1.1.0 by default kills alsa default software mixing. > > The only alternative is to have any attempt at playing surround > always fail to play more than stereo on a default setup. Correct me if I'm wrong, but currently I believe the libao setup is to try, depending on the number of channels of the input: channels : device ================= 7, 8 : surround71 6, 5 : surround51 4, 3 : surround40 2 : front 1 : default The only thing I personally had an actual issue with is using "front" for stereo rather than "default". I don't seem able to come up with a compelling reason why it should be "front" myself, so one tweak could perhaps be to only change the stereo device back to "default"? Frankly, on my system libao is (actively) used only by ogg123 and even for me, your average back-in-the-day, technology-obsoletist, any even halfway involved audio needs are these days met not by anything that involves libao. As such, I just need the most basic setup to be, well, basic. Currently arch linux is by the way shipping with an /etc/libao.conf that contains dev=default due to this issue. Trying to look at it from your side, I suppose the most consistent solution might be to introduce dev1=, dev2=, dev34=, dev56= and dev78= settings into the libao configuration (with for the ALSA plugin by default dev1=dev2=default still) -- but I'll butt out of that. If the stereo device can be "default" by default rather than "front" then I guess that goes a long way towards this issue being a non-issue. Remainder left in for possible comments from the ALSA side: > The bug reports about _that_ prompted the change to the current > behavior. > >> These days everybody seems to have regressed to using a soundserver >> again anyway > > Part of the reason for that is that ALSA provides so precious little > in the way of programmatic configuration discovery. So far as I can > tell, each and every user gets to script/configure his own setup, and > then also explicitly configure the applications what to do. > Applications can't even tell if a default setup is in use. It's all > plug-n-pray. > > If that's not the case, I'd love to hear about it. I agree the > current behavior sucks. > > Monty ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: [alsa-devel] libao problem (Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?) 2013-03-24 17:25 ` Rene Herman @ 2013-03-24 18:00 ` xiphmont 2013-03-24 18:50 ` [Vorbis-dev] " Clemens Ladisch 0 siblings, 1 reply; 12+ messages in thread From: xiphmont @ 2013-03-24 18:00 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Rene Herman; +Cc: alsa-devel, vorbis-dev, Clemens Ladisch > The only thing I personally had an actual issue with is using "front" for > stereo rather than "default". I don't seem able to come up with a compelling > reason why it should be "front" myself, so one tweak could perhaps be to > only change the stereo device back to "default"? Because then you can't guarantee or even discover what the playback rate and bitdepth are. There's no way to ensure bit-exact playback in a plug device, where 'front' is usually a non-plug alias. Like I said, I agree the current situation sucks, and I don't mean to discourage suggestions :-) Monty ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: [Vorbis-dev] libao problem (Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?) 2013-03-24 18:00 ` [alsa-devel] " xiphmont @ 2013-03-24 18:50 ` Clemens Ladisch 2013-03-24 19:43 ` [alsa-devel] " xiphmont 2013-03-24 21:28 ` Alan Horstmann 0 siblings, 2 replies; 12+ messages in thread From: Clemens Ladisch @ 2013-03-24 18:50 UTC (permalink / raw) To: xiphmont; +Cc: alsa-devel, vorbis-dev, Rene Herman xiphmont@xiph.org wrote: >> The only thing I personally had an actual issue with is using "front" for >> stereo rather than "default". I don't seem able to come up with a compelling >> reason why it should be "front" myself, so one tweak could perhaps be to >> only change the stereo device back to "default"? > > Because then you can't guarantee or even discover what the playback > rate and bitdepth are. There's no way to ensure bit-exact playback in > a plug device, where 'front' is usually a non-plug alias. The SND_PCM_NO_AUTO_* flags are there for exactly this reason: http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/group___p_c_m.html#ga64fa40b556374dabe40d4874242fee19 Regards, Clemens ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: [alsa-devel] libao problem (Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?) 2013-03-24 18:50 ` [Vorbis-dev] " Clemens Ladisch @ 2013-03-24 19:43 ` xiphmont 2013-03-24 20:01 ` [Vorbis-dev] " Rene Herman 2013-03-24 21:28 ` Alan Horstmann 1 sibling, 1 reply; 12+ messages in thread From: xiphmont @ 2013-03-24 19:43 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Clemens Ladisch; +Cc: alsa-devel, vorbis-dev, Rene Herman > The SND_PCM_NO_AUTO_* flags are there for exactly this reason: > http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/group___p_c_m.html#ga64fa40b556374dabe40d4874242fee19 Ahhh, very good. Yes, I can improve the situation given these flags. Monty ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: [Vorbis-dev] libao problem (Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?) 2013-03-24 19:43 ` [alsa-devel] " xiphmont @ 2013-03-24 20:01 ` Rene Herman 0 siblings, 0 replies; 12+ messages in thread From: Rene Herman @ 2013-03-24 20:01 UTC (permalink / raw) To: xiphmont; +Cc: alsa-devel, vorbis-dev, Clemens Ladisch On 24-03-13 20:43, xiphmont@xiph.org wrote: >> The SND_PCM_NO_AUTO_* flags are there for exactly this reason: >> http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/group___p_c_m.html#ga64fa40b556374dabe40d4874242fee19 > > Ahhh, very good. Yes, I can improve the situation given these flags. Great. If you keep me in the loop, I'll get dev=default removed in arch linux again once it has. Regards, Rene ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
* Re: [Vorbis-dev] libao problem (Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?) 2013-03-24 18:50 ` [Vorbis-dev] " Clemens Ladisch 2013-03-24 19:43 ` [alsa-devel] " xiphmont @ 2013-03-24 21:28 ` Alan Horstmann 1 sibling, 0 replies; 12+ messages in thread From: Alan Horstmann @ 2013-03-24 21:28 UTC (permalink / raw) To: alsa-devel; +Cc: Clemens Ladisch On Sunday 24 March 2013 18:50, Clemens Ladisch wrote: > xiphmont@xiph.org wrote: > >> The only thing I personally had an actual issue with is using "front" > >> for stereo rather than "default". I don't seem able to come up with a > >> compelling reason why it should be "front" myself, so one tweak could > >> perhaps be to only change the stereo device back to "default"? > > > > Because then you can't guarantee or even discover what the playback > > rate and bitdepth are. There's no way to ensure bit-exact playback in > > a plug device, where 'front' is usually a non-plug alias. > > The SND_PCM_NO_AUTO_* flags are there for exactly this reason: > http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/group___p_c_m.html#ga64fa40b5 >56374dabe40d4874242fee19 Where would those flags be used, and how is that different from calling snd_pcm_hw_params_set_rate_resample() (with '0' to disable) on the pcm/configuration space? Thanks Alan ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2013-03-24 21:32 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 12+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2013-01-16 19:26 No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default? Rene Herman 2013-01-16 20:52 ` Clemens Ladisch 2013-01-17 10:22 ` libao problem (Re: No dmix/dsnoop on Intel ICH4/5 by default?) Rene Herman 2013-01-17 12:12 ` Clemens Ladisch 2013-01-17 12:44 ` Rene Herman 2013-03-07 8:20 ` [Vorbis-dev] " xiphmont 2013-03-24 17:25 ` Rene Herman 2013-03-24 18:00 ` [alsa-devel] " xiphmont 2013-03-24 18:50 ` [Vorbis-dev] " Clemens Ladisch 2013-03-24 19:43 ` [alsa-devel] " xiphmont 2013-03-24 20:01 ` [Vorbis-dev] " Rene Herman 2013-03-24 21:28 ` Alan Horstmann
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