209 replies to this topic

[GuSec]

Extremely interesting issue, clearly seems to be a software conflict with ALSA (confusing stuff)! This is the prize for running this young hardware/software (now)!
I hope a solution will be found soon, it don't believe it to difficult to fix, once the problem has been located. (Hotfix 3?)

[torpor]

Also might be worth upgrading to the latest ALSA, because I seem to recall there being a recent bug related to underruns in ALSA, but I don't have the fu to provide a link right now. But, perhaps, a radical leap to the latest version would be in order ..

[fusion_power]

Extremely interesting issue, clearly seems to be a software conflict with ALSA (confusing stuff)! This is the prize for running this young hardware/software (now)!
I hope a solution will be found soon, it don't believe it to difficult to fix, once the problem has been located. (Hotfix 3?)

Yupp, I also find this interesting. SD and WIFI can cause bad sound Quality, this wouldn't come in my mind when I would try to find the reason of bad sound quality. But I'm not such a tech guy so it's cool that we have at least a direction for looking at the cause of the Problem.

For me as noob it sounds like this ALSA never was made to work with a OMAP ARM Chipset well, what had Texas Instruments in mind which Sound driver should be used to work 100%?
And if this ALSA problem is known also from the PC, why is it still "unsolved" even if ALSA exists since 1998? Is there an "bullet proof" and always working method to prevent any buffer underruns 'n stuff?
What would Brian Boitano do?

[mali]

ALSA is used on the N900 too, which has an OMAP3. Exophase has always been against ALSA, cause it's a resource hog. Whatever, ALSA works on N900 and will be made to work properly on Pandora sooner or later, I'm sure.

[fusion_power]

ALSA is used on the N900 too, which has an OMAP3. Exophase has always been against ALSA, cause it's a resource hog. Whatever, ALSA works on N900 and will be made to work properly on Pandora sooner or later, I'm sure.

Sounds good. I guess the Nokia Guys are no magicians so if they were able to solve this problem, "we" can do this too.
Yes, some time ago I read somewhere, that Exophase is not a friend of ALSA, and now I know why. He is a coder, he could write something new and efficiant.
But I guess there is no real alternative to ALSA for the Pandora at the Moment. ^^"

[EvilDragon]

I've also never been a friend of ALSA, as it caused all kind of weird issues on my desktop PCs (random order of two soundcards, even if I stated them correctly, crackling sound (yay!), etc.)

Using OSS4 on my PC, but as ALSA exists for our OMAP, fixing it seems easier than using a new one that doesn't support it yet

[HackModford]

There was an update available for ALSA-state so I upgraded...

Still the same...

Edit: I'm gonna mess around with Pulseaudio and see what happens. (I really have no idea what I'm doing but never underestimate the ingenuity of fools)

Edit: Does anyone have any idea how to get Pulse audio setup? I've installed pulseaudio, pulse audio mixer thingy, a now pulse audio preferences

Edit: When I go to pulse audio mixer it says "connection failed" I'm gonna reboot to see if that makes a difference. Also after updating Alsa-state my asoundrc is blank

Edit: bahhh... I can't figure it out. even though I've installed pulseaudio there are no configs where there should be.... something I'd be very interested in seeing/trying is if another distro has this sound problem. i.e. can I try running ubuntu netbook remix of an sd and seeing if I still have a sound issue?

Edited by HackModford, 13 June 2010 - 05:34 PM.

[notaz]

Pulse can't replace ALSA, it's just another layer on top of it, so you can only get more problems with this.

[torpor]

There is absolutely no point in looking at Pulseaudio until we get ALSA sorted.

I'm no fan of Pulseaudio (I use firewire on my home Linux box, Firepod 10 ftw, 10 channels of ins and outs, works plain and simple out of the box, except for .. Pulseaudio) but I will say this: if there is one place Pulseaudio should work extremely, beautifully, elegantly well, its the Pandora.

So lets get ALSA sorted first and then glom Pulseaudio on top. I really want this to be superlative, personally.

One thing we need is to find out what all the audio-capable apps for the .PND, right now, are using for output. IF they're doing ALSA callbacks, or if they're writing to /dev/dsp, we need to know that and use it to balance the debug results.

Does anyone know an app that *Absolutely* works, always, audio-wise? What is the best audio app so far, as far as you know .. ?

[HackModford]

If I was to make a wild guess in my situation it would be notaz's picodrive.

[HackModford]

N64 is another program that seems to go with my "good" sound settings

[notaz]

ok I think I've got a fix, everyone affected please try. Be sure to remove any .asoundrc tweaks you may have before trying this.

http://notaz.gp2x.de..._fix_100616.zip

Quoting readme:

1. Extract uImage and boot.txt to root of your SD
(must be first partition, FAT32 or ext2).
2. Turn off your pandora unit, then insert the SD with above
files into first slot (the one closer to headphone jack).
3. Press and hold R while turning on the unit. Keep pressing
until menu appears.
4. Select "boot from SD1" and use your pandora as usual.


Note: it is possible to install this into flash but I recommend
waiting for official hotfix installer for this, unless you're ok
with doing full reflash later just to install next hotfix.

Note2: if you want to boot this automatically, rename boot.txt to
autoboot.txt .

[zapman]

ok I think I've got a fix, everyone affected please try. Be sure to remove any .asoundrc tweaks you may have before trying this.

http://notaz.gp2x.de..._fix_100616.zip

Quoting readme:

1. Extract uImage and boot.txt to root of your SD
(must be first partition, FAT32 or ext2).
2. Turn off your pandora unit, then insert the SD with above
files into first slot (the one closer to headphone jack).
3. Press and hold R while turning on the unit. Keep pressing
until menu appears.
4. Select "boot from SD1" and use your pandora as usual.


Note: it is possible to install this into flash but I recommend
waiting for official hotfix installer for this, unless you're ok
with doing full reflash later just to install next hotfix.

Note2: if you want to boot this automatically, rename boot.txt to
autoboot.txt .

GREAT!!! Thx notaz, I'll try it right away! Booting....

WOW! 3 out of 3 tries (master of magic in dosbox, super mario world on zsnes and pandro panic) successful sound intialization!!!! woooooooooohooooooooooo! Good job notaz!

Will try some more, but it seems veryvery promising by now!! (Had sonud glitches in about 80%!)

Edited by zapman, 16 June 2010 - 09:19 PM.

[Qvazar]

ok I think I've got a fix, everyone affected please try.

What was the problem? How did you fix it? We want all the nasty details!

[SteveM]

If anyone gets a chance to try it, I'd be interested to hear if this fix makes any difference to the sound in MAME and Hu-Go.