Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:43:47 -0500 From: "Scott Spare" <scuppers@gmail.com> To: freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org Subject: Multiple simultaneous sound channels (sources) with X.org and Envy24 (M-Audio Audiophile 2496) Message-ID: <daaab7120812161343v124d7513s40bb0d26f9d91c23@mail.gmail.com>
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Multimedia gurus, I am looking for advice about the best way to handle the following situation: Playing sound with any two apps at the same time causes errors, sound stuttering and / or hangups. So far, I've tested and confirmed this problem under the following conditions: -Amarok is playing music and Pidgin tries to make noise to tell me someone's online. -XMMS is playing music and Pidgin tries to make noise. -XMMS and Amarok are both playing music at the same time. -Shell-FM is playing music and Pidgin tries to make noise. Expected behavior: Simultaneous sounds play simultaneously. Errors received: pcm0: play: dsp0.p0 play interrupt timeout, channel dead pcm0: play: dsp0.p1 play interrupt timeout, channel dead What I have tried so far: -I've enabled autovchans in sysctls: hw.snd.maxautovchans: 4. This did not help. -Reading more, I became a bit confused about a message regarding the driver (or at least the hardware) supporting multiplexing natively >* > it is a feature, not a bug and it is really great feature, so should be *>* > removed from the list with bugs. Envy24(1712) has very precise 36bit *>* wide *>* > hardware mixer, which is superior that vchans (software sound mixer in *>* the *>* > kernel). the driver supports Envy24(1712) hardware mixer, so up to 10 *>* > channels (5 stereo pairs) can be playback simultaneously and that is why *>* no *>* > software sound mixer (vchans) is needed. (This is from http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/htdig/freebsd-multimedia/2006-July/004560.html) * -So I installed OSS, thinking that maybe it could solve my multiple audio source problems, but got the same problem - stuttering sound when playing multiple sources, followed by instability. I later learned that OSS hadn't loaded correctly, and didn't support multiple sound channels on FreeBSD anyway, and I am trying to avoid running a heavy sound server if possible... so without any luck with OSS, I've now uninstalled it. I'm open to suggestions. Does anyone know how PC-BSD handles sound? Maybe they've got it right for the desktop? There's ALSA, ESD, ARTS, OSS FreeBSD version via ports, OSS 4Front version, vchans, hardware multiplexing and more. Pretty confusing. Here's some info about my setup: *sndstat:* FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm: 32bit 2007061600/i386) Installed devices: pcm0: <Envy24 audio (M Audio Audiophile 2496)> at io 0xccc0:32,0xcca0:16,0xcc80:16,0xcc00:64 irq 10 [MPSAFE] (5p:0v/3r:1v channels duplex default) *uname:* FreeBSD 7.1-PRERELEASE FreeBSD 7.1-PRERELEASE #0: Mon Nov 10 02:00:54 EST 2008 :/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/STRIPPED i386 *pciconf:* 1465- vendor = 'VIA Technologies Inc (Was: IC Ensemble Inc)' 1528: device = 'ICE1712 Envy24 Multichannel Audio Controller' 1592- class = multimedia 1620: subclass = audio I can provide more info if it helps, just let me know. Please advise? Scott http://www.scottspare.com
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