Updating to alsa-lib-1.0.16 introduced bad sound-quality on my 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller. Musik playback with amarok or mplayer is often interrupted shortly (milliseconds), when doing stuff like changing windows and workspaces and so on. The first few tenths of a second of an audio stream are often not played at all or garbled, which is particularly annoying with short notification sounds of messaging clients and so on. I had no such effects with earlier versions of alsa-lib and downgrading to alsa-lib-1.0.14a-r1 resolved the problems. I normaly do not use custom configuration files like /etc/asound.conf or ~/.asoundrc. Playing around with buffer-sizes in .asoundrc with 1.0.16 did not make anything better. Disabling dmix with 1.0.16 would have also resolved the quality problems, but this way also would not allow to play multiple audio-streams at the same time, so i choose to downgrade. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. find a system with an 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller 2. install media-libs/alsa-lib-1.0.16 on it 3. play musik and/or short notification sounds Actual Results: Crackling and short interruptions in music when clicking through windows, changing desktops and so on. Missing or garbled beginning of newly started audio streams particularly annoying with short notification sounds. Expected Results: Seamless music playback when the user interacts with the ui or the system is somewhat busy. Complete and flawless playback of audio samples of any size. $ uname -a Linux pahana 2.6.25-tuxonice-r3 #1 PREEMPT Wed May 14 18:10:12 CEST 2008 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1400MHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux relevant output of lshw: *-multimedia description: Multimedia audio controller product: 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 1f.5 bus info: pci@00:1f.5 version: 03 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: bus_master cap_list configuration: driver=Intel ICH resources: ioport:ee00-eeff ioport:e000-e03f iomemory:ffaff800-ffaff9ff iomemory:ffaff400-ffaff4ff irq:4
Your emerge --info, please.
Did you specify AC97 power saving, similar to that suggested in bug #194620 perhaps? If so, mind trying without?
Created attachment 154493 [details] emerge --info
$ cat /sys/module/snd_ac97_codec/parameters/power_save N I think it has been off all the time.
media-sound/alsa-utils is on 1.0.14. I will try alsa-utils-1.0.16 in conjunction with alsa-lib-1.0.16 soon and report again.
The problem occurs with alsa-lib-1.0.16_rc1, alsa-lib-1.0.16 and alsa-lib-1.0.16-r1. It also occurs with alsa-lib-1.0.16, when upgrading alsa-utils to 1.0.16. It does not occur with alsa-lib-1.0.14a-r1 and alsa-lib-1.0.15.
I have a somewhat similar problem with alsa-lib-1.0.16*. The main symptom is that the very beginning of playback is quiet and garbled, usually for the first drumbeat or so. Playback has been tried on mplayer, aplay and audacious, with the same results. I've found the problem on two different x86 machines and four different sound cards. Both machines use in-kernel drivers. Leaving out dmix solves the problem, but I also need to use it, so I've currently masked alsa-lib-1.0.16* and use the previous version.
Created attachment 156223 [details] drip test sound 1 I've been experiencing some problems that might be related with this. I haven't noticed yet any crackling in the sound. However I'm unable to play the two attached files. They are very short wav files that I use for notification. I've tested with aplay and mplayer -ao alsa without success. I'm able to reproduce the drip test sound with aplay -D hw:0 but I get the Warning: rate is not accurate (requested = 44100Hz, got = 48000Hz) please, try the plug plugin With the wood sound I can't reproduce it at all in aplay. I get the error aplay: set_params:900: Sample format non available The only way I'm able to reproduce both files is by using mplayer with -ao sdl or oss. I tested different combinations of alsa-utils and alsa-lib and found that it works with every version with exception of alsa-lib-1.0.16* emerge --info: Portage 2.1.4.4 (default-linux/x86/2007.0, gcc-4.1.2, glibc-2.6.1-r0, 2.6.24-gentoo-r8 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.24-gentoo-r8 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 2.00GHz Timestamp of tree: Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:15:01 +0000 ccache version 2.4 [enabled] app-shells/bash: 3.2_p33 dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7, 2.1.6 dev-lang/python: 2.4.4-r13 dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r6 dev-util/ccache: 2.4-r7 sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.12 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.18.1-r2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.61-r1 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.7.9-r1, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.18-r1 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.0-r4 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.26 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.23-r3 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=pentium-m -O2 -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/web2c /etc/udev/rules.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium-m -O2 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="ccache collision-protect distlocks metadata-transfer parallel-fetch sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://darkstar.ist.utl.pt/gentoo/ http://ftp.dei.uc.pt/pub/linux/gentoo/ http://cesium.di.uminho.pt/pub/gentoo/" LANG="en_US.UTF-8" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/portage/local/layman/science /usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://darkstar.ist.utl.pt/gentoo-portage" USE="X alsa bzip2 cli cracklib crypt cups dri firefox fortran gdbm gif gpm iconv ipv6 isdnlog jpeg midi mudflap ncurses nptl nptlonly opengl openmp pcre perl png pppd python readline reflection sdl session spl sse sse2 ssl tcpd tiff truetype unicode x86 xorg zlib" ALSA_CARDS="intel8x0 intel8x0m" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic auth_digest authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dbd deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers ident imagemap include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation proxy proxy_ajp proxy_balancer proxy_connect proxy_ftp proxy_http rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" APACHE2_MPMS="worker" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse synaptics" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="fbdev fglrx vesa vga radeon" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS
Created attachment 156225 [details] wood test sound 2
Created attachment 156227 [details] alsa-info output Full alsa information generated using alsa-info.sh
Same problem found on a PPC machine: iMac G3/233 Rev. B, in-kernel (vanilla 2.6.25.6) snd-powermac driver. Alsa-lib version is 1.0.16-r1. Without dmix, it sounds fine.
Same problem with snd_hda_intel (from 2.6.23-gentoo-r9) on ASUS P5B
Same problem here. I had to downgrade alsa-lib to 1.0.14a-r1. snd_hda_intel / Asus A6M notebook. vanilla-kernel-2.6.25.9
Seems this problem mostly affects a xine-lib based players.Without dmix it work normal(I mean kaffeine, amarok with xine-lib engine enabled)
I'm gonna close this one as UPSTREAM, not too much we can do here if it's not really Gentoo specific and seems to be a driver issue (vs. setup / configuration on our end). https://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/alsa-bug/login_page.php If someone does post or find a bug, feel free to comment here.
