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Date:      Sat, 18 Mar 2006 03:18:26 -0600
From:      Mark Kane <mark@mkproductions.org>
To:        Ariff Abdullah <ariff@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: Sound Crackling When Reading From Hard Drives
Message-ID:  <441BD062.4010803@mkproductions.org>
In-Reply-To: <20060317071717.608ee0a2.ariff@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <44192538.80102@mkproductions.org>	<20060316171905.2d3029bf.ariff@FreeBSD.org>	<4419EBA9.5070606@mkproductions.org> <20060317071717.608ee0a2.ariff@FreeBSD.org>

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Ariff Abdullah wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Mar 2006 16:50:17 -0600
> Mark Kane <mark@mkproductions.org> wrote:
>> My sound is compiled into the kernel so I'm not sure how to reload
>> the  driver without rebooting. I did try the above suggestions
>> though. When  trying 32768 and 65536 the crackling in the audio got
>> worse/louder than  before when copying data.
>>
> Maybe you're experiencing resource contention caused by irq sharing.
> Take a look at the output of vmstat -i. Try to move the soundcard
> elsewhere (other pci slot). Another thing to consider is PCI Latency
> Timer settings. If your BIOS has the option to toggle the value, try
> to increase it. If not, use this:
> 
>    http://people.freebsd.org/~ariff/utils/pcilattimer

Thanks again for the suggestions. So far here is what I have:

[mixx941@amd64:~]% vmstat -i
interrupt                          total       rate
irq1: atkbd0                      200599          0
irq3: sio1                             1          0
irq4: sio0                             1          0
irq6: fdc0                             3          0
irq12: psm0                      5873314         26
irq14: ata0                      1285014          5
irq15: ata1                       159907          0
irq16: atapci3                   1100937          5
irq17: pcm0                      6193491         28
irq18: fwohci0+                        2          0
irq19: skc0+                    19711298         90
cpu0: timer                    435955564       2000
Total                          470480131       2158

Nothing is sharing the same irq from what I can see. I have not been 
able to shut this machine down yet so I have not tried moving the sound 
card, but if nothing else is on the same irq will that even make a 
difference?

I tried your utility to change the PCI timings as I have not been able 
to check in BIOS yet (I don't believe it has those settings anyway). I 
performed various tests while increasing the value for the sound card to 
several different values. I have never had to do this before so I just 
guessed at a bunch of numbers, and then returned it back to 32 which is 
where it was originally. Some numbers I tried were 64, 96, 128, 192, 256 
(which auto set it to 200), etc. None of the changes seemed to change 
the crackling of the sound at all. I stopped and restarted the song each 
time after changing the settings and before accessing the hard drive to 
test, but still no change. I also tried increasing the timing on atapci3 
which is the controller where the test HD for this round was.

Here is the listing of the unmodified times with -l:

PCI Latency Timer agp0@pci0:0:0:       :   0
PCI Latency Timer isab0@pci0:1:0:      :   0
PCI Latency Timer none0@pci0:1:1:      :   0
PCI Latency Timer ohci0@pci0:2:0:      :   0
PCI Latency Timer ohci1@pci0:2:1:      :   0
PCI Latency Timer ehci0@pci0:2:2:      :   0
PCI Latency Timer atapci0@pci0:8:0:    :   0
PCI Latency Timer atapci1@pci0:10:0:   :   0
PCI Latency Timer pcib1@pci0:11:0:     :  16
PCI Latency Timer pcib2@pci0:14:0:     :   0
PCI Latency Timer hostb0@pci0:24:0:    :   0
PCI Latency Timer hostb1@pci0:24:1:    :   0
PCI Latency Timer hostb2@pci0:24:2:    :   0
PCI Latency Timer hostb3@pci0:24:3:    :   0
PCI Latency Timer none1@pci1:0:0:      :  32
PCI Latency Timer atapci2@pci2:7:0:    :  32
PCI Latency Timer pcm0@pci2:9:0:       :  32
PCI Latency Timer emujoy0@pci2:9:1:    :  32
PCI Latency Timer fwohci0@pci2:9:2:    :  32
PCI Latency Timer skc0@pci2:11:0:      :  64
PCI Latency Timer atapci3@pci2:12:0:   :   0
PCI Latency Timer fwohci1@pci2:14:0:   :  32

-Mark

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