Audio Issues -- Fixed (kind of)

[wsuetholz]

Hello, 
  I have a MD that is base on a NVidia chipset.  It is an Asus A8N-VMCSM system board.  It uses the snd-hda-intel sound driver.  I have applied all the fixes I needed when I was running a MythTV install, and the sound is not good.  It's distorted during playback.
  I changed the flag to not auto start the MD software/orbiter and played the same exact audio file using mplayer, and it sounds ok, until I start up the MD.  The audio will get distorted even on the running mplayer session.

  Any ideas?  It doesn't seem to be media file related, and there seems to be plenty of processor available during this.

Thanks.

[wsuetholz]

I have narrowed down the problem to the start of the orbiter device (33 in my case).  If I disable that device in the web admin, the sound stays good.   So, what is the orbiter doing to me??  What should I try now?

[colinjones]

Can you tell me, when you fo to KDE desktop from the Orbiter (with LMCE components running), the start-up sound that KDE desktop makes as it opens, is that distorted?

[wsuetholz]

Can you tell me, when you fo to KDE desktop from the Orbiter (with LMCE components running), the start-up sound that KDE desktop makes as it opens, is that distorted?

I didn't actually pay attention to that....  I'll have to try, my first inclination is to say that it was distorted.

What I did to test this..
  1) I Switched off the auto start of the Media Director.
  2) ran mplayer on a long song.. 
        Sound good
  3) Start the Media Director
      Sound becomes distorted.
  4) Switch back to KDE using the Advanced menu.
  5) Stop the Media Director from the Launcher
      Somewhere between stopping device 35, 33, 32 the sound becomes good again.
      35 is HAL
      I don't remember what 33 is.
      32 is Orbiter.

So based upon that, I disabled those devices one at a time in the web admin app and found that If I don't start the orbiter device the sound does not become distorted.

I then tried to disable the child devices of the orbiter ( mythtv, mplayer, xine, ...), but it seems that those devices don't pay attention to the disabled flag, because I always saw them running in the process status.

I tried killing the individual devices by sending a signal 15 to them, but that didn't do anything (except lock up the orbiter).

So my conclusion, is that one of the sub devices is opening the audio device, and trying to configure it based upon some setting, that I haven't been able to determine the origination of. 

I have not been able to alter the behavior while the orbiter is running using alsamixer.  I also have not been able to duplicate the problem without the orbiter running.

I'm perfectly willing to concede that I might have messed up a setting in this device, however I have tried reconfiguring the diskless boot directory, and that didn't seem to make any difference, to this problem, it added a few more to my plate though, I had the ATI USB remote working, and now I have to figure out what I did again...  I had glxgears working with decent frame rate, and now it's down to 10 FPS.  But, I'd like to get this audio issue resolved before I proceed on to the next fire.

The devs did take some time to try to help a bit on the IRC channel, but didn't really have any ideas what to try next.

Thanks for any help.


BTW: would anybody be interested on a WIKI about configuring VNC in the X server..  I have found that to be of great assistance, because you can't really read the characters on the TV in KDE mode, plus overscan.  VNC isn't really great in the UI2 orbiter, but it works well for the UI1 orbiter.  It's just three lines added to the xorg.conf file, and a password file config.

 

[colinjones]

Mine only does it in kde and irrespective of whether orbiter is running, so must be different.

Just set the DPI in xorg to something sensible to make your fonts readable.

But, yes, you should add the wiki page anyway.

[wsuetholz]

With regards to a WIKI about VNC in the X server..  I think that the best place would be to enhance the vncserver wiki entry with the instructions, for adding VNC to the running X server.  The current wiki references starting a new X session, and utilizing the built in kde desktop sharing.  Not sure how the kde stuff works, but, it doesn't seem to do what I did.

I didn't get a chance to mess with the audio problems last night, since one of my children had turned on the MD and shut the cabinet door, so it was really hot..  So, I decided to turn it off and let it cool down overnight.  Added another thing to my list of todo's though.  Auto sleep mode

[wsuetholz]

Well, this is weird...  I finally gave up on trying to understand what was going wrong, and decided to try reloading the diskless image.  After three trys it is working now..  This is very weird.  The first try, I still had stuff disabled in the web admin, the second try, I really don't know why it didn't work.  But now I just have the issue of wanting the sound to be routed out the digital and analog stereo at the same time.. 

Just as a note, all three trys were without applying the alsa driver updates that were necessary for my prior mythtv install.

EDIT: It's not the rebuild.  It's the UI2 vs UI1.  UI2 Static breaks..  UI1 seems to work.

So, now on to the remote...

Thanks for the assistance given, both here and on the chat line.