Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 16:50:17 -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: <4419EBA9.5070606@mkproductions.org> In-Reply-To: <20060316171905.2d3029bf.ariff@FreeBSD.org> References: <44192538.80102@mkproductions.org> <20060316171905.2d3029bf.ariff@FreeBSD.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Ariff Abdullah wrote: > On Thu, 16 Mar 2006 02:43:36 -0600 > Mark Kane <mark@mkproductions.org> wrote: >> Hi everyone. I have been experiencing problems with sound crackling >> under certain situations of disk activity for the life of this >> machine. It has occurred with 5.4-RELEASE, 6.0-RELEASE, and three >> different versions of 6.1-PRERELEASE. It's not a huge problem but I >> thought I'd post about this situation in case there is a known fix, >> and if not then offer to help try any patches to get it resolved >> assuming it's not my hardware being odd. >> >> First off, the relevant hardware is as follows (full dmesg >> attached): Athlon64 3000+ >> GA-K8NS Pro Motherboard (nForce3) >> 1.5GB RAM >> Sound Blaster Augidy 2 Platinum >> 6 PATA hard drives (varying sizes, see dmesg) >> Promise ATA Card (PDC20269) >> >> Originally I thought it was just when extracting archives like tar >> or rar which uses disk I/O and CPU power to extract them, but >> tonight I was just copying data between drives which I don't do >> very much and the problems occurred as well. So then I started >> doing some tests of copying an 800MB file back and forth between >> hard drives while playing a music file and documenting my results. >> My results and the hard drives are at the end of this message. I >> didn't test every possible combination because I realized that it >> probably has to do with reading from drives in general and not just >> extracting archives. >> >> I then did another test with md5 to test my "reading from disk" >> theory. When using a utility like `md5`, sound crackling occurred >> when using `md5` on files from the same source drives that had >> problems copying FROM in the below tests. In other words, copying a >> file from ad12 to ad0 produced heavy crackling in the below copy >> tests but copying the same file from ad0 to ad12 did not. When >> using `md5` on the file located on ad12 it makes the bad crackling >> noise, but once again it has no crackling problems when md5ing the >> same file located on ad0. >> >> Three of the drives are on the motherboard's on-board controllers. >> The mobo has a total of four onboard IDE channels, so each hard >> drive is master on it's own dedicated channel and the DVD burner >> has it's own channel too. The remaining three hard drives are on a >> Promise (PDC20269) PCI ATA card. They all have brand new proper >> cables and have no other problems. >> >> The same result happens with different music file types (ogg, wave, >> mp3) being played back from various drives. When rebuilding for >> 6.1-BETA4 I tried the ULE scheduler instead of the 4BSD. ULE seems >> to do better for video playback which had some stuttering problems >> before, but doesn't change this sound crackling problem when >> reading from hard drives. However with ULE I did experience a few >> seconds of freezing while trying to get out of my screensaver (just >> a black screen) as there was HD activity in the background as well >> as an earlier 5-10 second freeze while playing video from one HD at >> the same time another HD was decoding some files, but that's >> another topic. >> >> I have no special options enabled in my kernel now except for the >> emu_10k1 driver and atapicam. >> >> Here is a sample of the crackling when doing some of the below copy >> tests. A few seconds of the normal song is first, then I start the >> copy when the crackling kicks in...followed by a few seconds of >> normal playback again after it's done. It's harder to notice on the >> second cut but I tried a couple genres of music. Again, this is not >> the worst problem but I'd like to help improve it any way I can >> (I'm not a coder, but am very willing to test). >> >> http://www.tntpowerhost.com/mixx941/FreeBSD_sound_crackling.ogg >> >> So in short, when playing audio and reading files from hard drives, >> the sound has crackling noises in it. It happens when extracting >> archives and copying files from drive to drive with my additional >> drives, but reading and extracting from/to ad0 (the FreeBSD install >> drive) always seems to work with no crackling. It's just the >> additional ones now that seem to have problems when >> reading/copying/md5ing from them. >> >> Is this some weird hardware problem on my end? Has anyone else seen >> or experienced this? What can I try to help narrow down the problem >> if it's not a known one? >> >> Any suggestions would be much appreciated. >> >> Thanks! > Try to increase pcm buffersize either using kenv(1) or > /boot/device.hints. > > # Start from 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536 > # kenv hint.pcm.0.buffersize=8192 > > or to make it permanent, put that into /boot/device.hints > > Reload your sound driver. Hi, thanks for your reply. 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. -Mark >> FreeBSD amd64.localhost 6.1-PRERELEASE FreeBSD 6.1-PRERELEASE #8: >> Wed Mar 15 12:04:40 CST 2006 >> mixx941@amd64.localhost:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/AMD643000 amd64 >> >> [mixx941@amd64:~]% cat /dev/sndstat >> FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm) >> Installed devices: >> pcm0: <Creative Audigy 2 (EMU10K2)> at io 0x9400 irq 17 (8p/2r/0v >> channels duplex default) >> >> >> ================================================ >> COPY TESTS: >> >> ad0: 194481MB <Maxtor 6B200R0 BAH41BM0> at ata0-master UDMA133 >> ad8: 76344MB <MAXTOR 6L080J4 A93.0500> at ata4-master UDMA133 >> ad10: 78166MB <Maxtor 6Y080P0 YAR41BW0> at ata5-master UDMA133 >> ad11: 156334MB <Maxtor 6Y160P0 YAR41BW0> at ata5-slave UDMA133 >> ad12: 194481MB <Maxtor 6B200P0 BAH41BM0> at ata6-master UDMA133 >> ad14: 239372MB <Maxtor 6Y250P0 YAR41BW0> at ata7-master UDMA133 >> >> /dev/ad0 (200GB Maxtor on Onboard IDE): >> ad0 -> ad10 = Clean >> ad0 -> ad12 = Clean >> ad0 -> ad14 = Clean >> >> /dev/ad8 (80GB Maxtor on Promise card): >> ad8 -> ad10 = Heavy Crackling >> ad8 -> ad12 = Slight Crackling >> ad8 -> ad14 = Slight Crackling >> >> /dev/ad10 (80GB Maxtor on Promise card): >> ad10 -> ad8 = Slight Crackling >> ad10 -> ad0 = Slight Crackling >> >> /dev/ad11 (160GB Maxtor on Promise card)): >> ad11 -> ad14 = Very Slight Crackling and much faster copy time than >> rest >> >> /dev/ad12 (200GB Maxtor on Onboard IDE): >> ad12 -> ad0 = Heavy Crackling >> ad12 -> ad8 = Heavy Crackling >> >> /dev/ad14 (250GB Maxtor on Onboard IDE): >> ad14 -> ad0 = Heavy Crackling >> ad14 -> ad8 = Heavy Crackling >> ad14 -> ad11 = Heavy Crackling and music stopped playing for a few >> seconds (music file being played back is on ad10) >> ================================================ >> >> -- >> GnuPG Public Key: >> http://www.mkproductions.org/mk_pubkey.asc >> >> Internet Radio: >> Party107 (Trance/Electronic) - http://www.party107.com >> Rock 101.9 The Edge (Rock) - http://www.rock1019.net >> >> IRC: >> MIXXnet IRC Network - irc.mixxnet.net (Nick: MIXX941) >> > > > -- > Ariff Abdullah > FreeBSD -- GnuPG Public Key: http://www.mkproductions.org/mk_pubkey.asc Internet Radio: Party107 (Trance/Electronic) - http://www.party107.com Rock 101.9 The Edge (Rock) - http://www.rock1019.net IRC: MIXXnet IRC Network - irc.mixxnet.net (Nick: MIXX941)
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4419EBA9.5070606>