Bit Perfect Audio from Linux - Page 7

Yeah you used a small case l, not a capital L. The difference between small case and capital is important in Linux. They are two different things.

Anyways. As Anda said, you should configure your music player to use Device 4, the one named IEC958. IEC958 Is the IEC standard for digital audio. This device is the SPDIF output of your audio card. The reason why you don't get any audio with the hw output is probably because you're using the analog and not the digital device. If you look at the pasted lines, you'll see I have two devices named "Direct hardware device without any conversions". One is Analog, the other is Digital. Analog is the headphone out of my laptop, the other is the SPDIF output in the mini-din connector at the back (Dell laptop). The output of "aplay -L" is the exact same thing as the drop-down menu of Deadbeef, so pasting it here will be of great help.

But still, it doesn't explain why the sampling gets all messed up. I really have no idea why it does that. Have you tried another music player? It's an essential step to pin point the cause of the problem.

Hi again,

To Anda: it returns about 9 pages of parameters. What should I be looking for? Most parameters concern video and other stuff. The ones which I can figure are around audio are:

...  

udev Discs

udev Audio capture (ALSA)

...

  mtp MTP devices

mtp MTP devices

pulselist Audio capture (PulseAudio)

pulselist Audio capture (PulseAudio)

...

  wav WAV demuxer

aiff AIFF demuxer

...

  ps MPEG-PS demuxer

ps MPEG-PS demuxer

ogg OGG demuxer

flacsys FLAC demuxer

mjpeg M-JPEG camera demuxer

playlist Playlist

playlist ZPL playlist import

playlist WPL playlist import

playlist iTunes Music Library importer

playlist Dummy ifo demux

playlist Google Video Playlist importer

playlist QuickTime Media Link importer

playlist Kasenna MediaBase parser

playlist ASX playlist import

playlist New winamp 5.2 shoutcast import

playlist XSPF playlist import

playlist Podcast parser

playlist DVB playlist import

playlist B4S playlist import

playlist PLS playlist import

playlist RAM playlist import

playlist M3U playlist import

...

  flac Flac audio decoder

flac Flac audio encoder

...

  lpcm Linear PCM audio decoder

lpcm Linear PCM audio encoder

lpcm Linear PCM audio packetizer

...

  adpcm ADPCM audio decoder

mpeg_audio MPEG audio layer I/II/III decoder

mpeg_audio MPEG audio layer I/II/III packetizer

...

  vorbis Vorbis audio decoder

vorbis Vorbis audio encoder

vorbis Vorbis audio packetizer

...

  speex Speex audio decoder

speex Speex audio encoder

speex Speex audio packetizer

...

  pulse Pulseaudio audio output

amem Audio memory output

oss Open Sound System

aout_file File audio output

alsa ALSA audio output

adummy Dummy audio output

...

  compressor Dynamic range compressor

audio_format Audio filter for PCM format conversion

dolby_surround_decoder Simple decoder for Dolby Surround encoded streams

trivial_channel_mixer Audio filter for trivial channel mixing

simple_channel_mixer Audio filter for simple channel mixing

speex_resampler Speex resampler

equalizer Equalizer with 10 bands

ugly_resampler Nearest-neighbor audio resampler

samplerate Secret Rabbit Code (libsamplerate) resampler

chorus_flanger Sound Delay

a52tospdif Audio filter for A/52->S/PDIF encapsulation

mono Audio filter for stereo to mono conversion

normvol Volume normalizer

dtstospdif Audio filter for DTS->S/PDIF encapsulation

mpgatofixed32 MPEG audio decoder

audiobargraph_a Audio part of the BarGraph function

converter_fixed Fixed point audio format conversions

converter_fixed Fixed point audio format conversions

spatializer Audio Spatializer

scaletempo Audio tempo scaler synched with rate

karaoke Simple Karaoke filter

headphone_channel_mixer Headphone virtual spatialization effect

param_eq Parametric Equalizer

dtstofloat32 DTS Coherent Acoustics audio decoder

a52tofloat32 ATSC A/52 (AC-3) audio decoder

taglib taglib

taglib taglib

folder Folder meta data

v4l2 Video4Linux2 input

v4l2 Video4Linux2 Compressed A/V

access_mtp MTP input

cdda Audio CD input

...

  access_alsa ALSA audio capture input

Any idea from all that?

;-)

Thanks

To Kim,

Yes, I can see a similar list with aplay -L (thanks by the way to point to the case sensitive behaviour), or even in the Preference/sound/Output device box directly in DeadBeeF. The thing is that i doesn't exit any sound except when I put the option mentioning explicitly S/PDIF (in bold in the list below). I therefore can't use the "without any conversion" option.

I started to think my hardware in defect, but I tried with another PC (a Latitude D800 this time), same behaviour. So I'm completely lost!!

No bit perfect with my PC :-(

Shame, my DAC is just waiting for more bits to crunch!

Thanks anyway for all your efforts!!

jerome@jerome-Inspiron-8600:~$ aplay -L

Quote:

Originally Posted by qayws 

To Kim,

Yes, I can see a similar list with aplay -L (thanks by the way to point to the case sensitive behaviour), or even in the Preference/sound/Output device box directly in DeadBeeF. The thing is that i doesn't exit any sound except when I put the option mentioning explicitly S/PDIF (in bold in the list below). I therefore can't use the "without any conversion" option.

I started to think my hardware in defect, but I tried with another PC (a Latitude D800 this time), same behaviour. So I'm completely lost!!

No bit perfect with my PC :-(

Shame, my DAC is just waiting for more bits to crunch!

Thanks anyway for all your efforts!!

 

 

jerome@jerome-Inspiron-8600:~$ aplay -L

default

    Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound server

sysdefault:CARD=I82801DBICH4

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4

    Default Audio Device

front:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=0

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4

    Front speakers

surround40:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=0

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4

    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers

surround41:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=0

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4

    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers

surround50:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=0

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4

    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers

surround51:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=0

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4

    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers

iec958:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=0

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4 - IEC958

    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

dmix:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=0

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4

    Direct sample mixing device

dmix:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=4

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4 - IEC958

    Direct sample mixing device

dsnoop:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=0

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4

    Direct sample snooping device

dsnoop:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=4

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4 - IEC958

    Direct sample snooping device

hw:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=0

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4

    Direct hardware device without any conversions

hw:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=4

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4 - IEC958

    Direct hardware device without any conversions

plughw:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=0

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4

    Hardware device with all software conversions

plughw:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=4

    Intel 82801DB-ICH4, Intel 82801DB-ICH4 - IEC958

    Hardware device with all software conversions

It's there, lower in the list. I highlighted the correct output device. As I said, IEC958 = SPDIF. Using the device I made italic will output directly to your SPDIF output without any software conversion.

In DeadBeef, the device should be named like so:

1. Select the device I made italic.
2. Play a file.
3. While playing, take a screenshot of DeadBeef and post it here.
4. While playing, paste here the output of "cat /proc/asound/card*/pcm*p/sub*/hw_params"

I'm starting to think it may be a "device busy" problem. It may be that Alsa or another mixer is keeping a connection to the DAC, so no other software can send a stream to it. This is why we use Dmix. You can only send a single stream directly to the DAC. Dmix mixes all the streams together (e.g. Youtube, Skype and system sounds all playing together) and then sends a single stream to the DAC. I've had similar problems with Amarok. I have both DeadBeef and Amarok configured to use direct hardware. If I launch Amarok while DeadBeef is playing, Amarok will close Deadbeef's stream and open it's own stream to the DAC.

Quote:

Originally Posted by qayws 

To Anda: it returns about 9 pages of parameters. What should I be looking for? Most parameters concern video and other stuff. The ones which I can figure are around audio are:

It should run VLC as a daemon. Try playing some music to see if VLC can output sound to the SPDIF output.

Good morning,

Trying to play with VLC works on the default output option (trough pulse audio), but when I try to use the option IEC958 - without any conversion, I get an error message:

Audio output failed:

The audio device "hw:CARD=I82801DBICH4,DEV=4" could not be used:

Device or resource busy.

To kim, as I said before, when I select the output device you mentioned:

I get no signal, this is why I started to believe I have a hw problem (either the sound card, or may be the DAC doesn't lock on 96kHz for some reason - although it is supposed to according to specs).

The funny thing is that I get a signal when I select the option directly above:

Ah, you have Pulse Audio installed? This may be the source of the problem. The first thing I do after a fresh install is purge everything related to Pulse Audio. Pulse is just dirty...

The VLC error message confirms what I doubted. Pulse Audio is keeping a stream open to your sound card, and will not permit any other software to talk directly to the audio hardware.

It's probably Pulse Audio that's so retarded, it cuts the samples in half without doubling the speed, causing the audio to play at half speed.

You could try to temporarily shut down pulse, and see if it fixes your problem. It's a pain though, as pulse will restart itself it you simply kill it. You have to outsmart it. This may work, to disable pulse only for this program:

pasuspender -- /opt/deadbeef/bin/deadbeef

But since I don't have pulse installed, I can't test it.

Bouhouhou!!!

(doesn't work!)

I managed to kill pulse audio, though. Good start. And when I play "vlc --alsa-audio-device=hw:0,4 -I qt4 -d" as Anda suggested, I do not get the "device or resource busy" as before ...

... and apparently there is a signal (at 48kHz though, see below) because my DAC locks on something ...

... but no sounds (as if the signal was only 0s)

... and it still works on the non-IEC598 "without connversion" output ... but at 48kHz

(and yes, the amp is on ;-)

I'm thinking of giving up. 

Can I install iTunes on Ubuntu? (just kidding)

hw_params:

In terminal try running "alsamixer" and check if SPDIF/IEC958 is unmuted. Are you still trying to playback a 96KHz file?

This is how my alsamixer looks:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anda 

In terminal try running "alsamixer" and check if SPDIF/IEC958 is unmuted. Are you still trying to playback a 96KHz file?

 

This is how my alsamixer looks:

Good pick!

I have two S/PDIF bargraphs:

- one "S/PDIF" stuck to 00 no matter what

- one "S/PDIF Playback AC97-SPSA" which can take 4 values: 00, 33, 67 and 100. It was on 67. But there a signal only at 100. Don't know why.

Now I have an output on "...-IEC598 without any conversion" which produces sound on my speakers

...

BUT

...

96kHz still played at half pace (and 44.1 kHz 8% too fast)!!!

....

ARGHHH

...

Must be a prob from the DAC (but I am trying on 2 of them, same thing).

Called Musical Fidelity as well, they are unaware of such malfunction on this model. So either I'm unlucky and the DAC is broken (but works with CDs), or the setting is still not correct.

Thanks anyway, Anda and Kim, for so much help!

Quote:

Originally Posted by qayws 

96kHz still played at half pace (and 44.1 kHz 8% too fast)!!!

Is this with Deadbeef? What's the name of the Chip in alsamixer?

Deadbeef, yes.

Chip in AlsaMixer v1.0.25 is SigmaTel STAC9750,51  and the card is Intel 82801DB-ICH4

Quote:

Originally Posted by qayws 

Deadbeef, yes.

Chip in AlsaMixer v1.0.25 is SigmaTel STAC9750,51  and the card is Intel 82801DB-ICH4

http://alsa-project.org/~james/datasheets/sigmatel/stac9750-pb.pdf

"Supported audio sample rates include 48 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 32 kHz, 22.05 kHz, 16 kHz, 11.025 kHz, and 8 kHz"

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anda 

 

http://alsa-project.org/~james/datasheets/sigmatel/stac9750-pb.pdf

 

"Supported audio sample rates include 48 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 32 kHz, 22.05 kHz, 16 kHz, 11.025 kHz, and 8 kHz"

Right.

Make sense.

So two options left: a newer PC, or a USB2SPDIF device, I guess.

Thanks and congratulation for working this out!

Jerome