Linux AudioEngine testers - Linux only

(2012-04-16 01:01)Drae Wrote:  The NVidia driver you're using 295.xx is a pita - try dropping to 290 or 280/285. I don't know if this is something Gnif et al can fix - that driver has caused various issues for peeps as far as I know, not just audio wise.

EDIT: for my atrocious grammar!

Hi Drae,
bingo! Downgrading the driver worked immediately.

No other changes!

So it must be something with the driver 295.

I hope this helps the developer.

For all: driver 290.10 works with Ubuntu 11.04 server edition 32 bit.
Video card: GT430
hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3

There is a known issue with 295 - bobo1on1 notified nVidia of the issue - hopefully it get's corrected on their end. One of their functions was creating a loop.

I've serious trouble with a soundblaster audigy2 zs analog output: when xbmc starts, audio level is EXTREMELY HIGH (damn!!!!) and with a very very distorted sound near to damage my studio monitors (arrrgghhhh!!!!).

Here a log when xbmc was started and I had to immediately kill http://pastebin.com/91m9zucv

May as well post this now, the information I have collected may be useful.
Trying to get True-HD and DTS-MA working, as that is the main reason for building this htpc.
Progress was reasonably good until trying to fix the final issue - HD sound.

I have done numerous builds and configurations with ubuntu 11.10, and now 12.04, and XBMC from 11.0 RC1 -> RC2 -> release, pulseaudio-patch, audioengine.
Several attempts to install drivers and alsa versions.
This configuration is the closest I have come to a working system:

XBMC 12.0-ALPHA1 Git:20120416-afbac7c, Platform: Linux (Ubuntu precise (development branch), 3.2.0-23-generic-pae i686). Built on Apr 16 2012.
All drivers and alsa are from the ubuntu 12.04.

Still, there is only distorted, noisy sound when playing anything HD (Dolby True HD, DTS MA).
2-ch PCM, DTS, DD, DTS.HD (5.1/24-96) works, on HDMI.

Hardware:
Asus P8H67I-Deluxe with Intel i3 2120 cpu, 4Gb RAM.
(Intel Cougarpoint HD audio).
HDMI to AV receiver.
Tested on Win7-install where everything works fine, including TrueHD, DTS-MA (Verified by inspecting audio format detected by receiver - channels, codec, sample rates).

card, codec:
Realtek ALC892
Intel CougarPoint HDMI

eld#3.0:
eld

xbmc log; start xbmc - open and play truehd clip - exit:
TrueHD

xbmc log; start xbmc - open and play dts-ma clip - exit:
DTS-MA

Does disabling VAAPI help?

Just FYI, there's some differences between my Windows code / builds and gnif's current repo. We know a few things are broken in gnif's right now...

(2012-04-17 05:05)wingrunr21 Wrote:  Does disabling VAAPI help?

Disable or enable VAAPI or VDPAU makes no difference.
Enable Sync playback to display causes some files to fail.

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Menu sound also works now, never did before.
Now both menu and playback sound works simultaneously.

Sound does not work from other applications, when xbmc is running.
If Firefox is strted from xbmc, then there is no sound when playing videos or flash.
If xbmc is shut down, sound works again in other apps, such as Firefox.

Hi,
I'm using the last gnif's build and I downgraded to Nvidia driver 290.10 and it's working like a charm! No need of any custom device, alsa device enumeration is working very well (huge improvement!)
True HD and DTS MA/HD are not working: channels are detected by the amplifier but I hear the raw signal (displayed as PCM on the amplifier). It might be a limitation on my chipset (Nvidia 320M).
BTW I am using a Macmini 4,1 (2010 model) intel core2 + nvidia 320M.

The work you've done is really impressive

Couple of comments on this thread ... I'm seeing a lot of general Linux sound issues, and not really AE issues. Can you guys first make sure that your configuration is sane on Eden before trying AE? FYI, once I got my audio configured correctly, I haven't had too much in the way of immediate, audio related problems ... Most of the issues are either merge based (my build from last Saturday has library management problems for instance), or issues that arise after a few hours of use switching between codecs.

Another thing is to make sure that you're building it correctly. We should make sure the OP is correct in terms of flags; I've always built with '--disable-pulse', as recommended in the core thread at one point. Everything has worked, but is that the correct method going forward?

As of now pulse is disabled by default in the AE builds afaik - since it's not yet supported - least I'm sure I saw a commit disabling it.