Thread: [Alsa-user] file.wav -> dsp issue
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From: <br...@ha...> - 2004-11-30 18:04:11
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I'm a noobie when it comes to sound, and this question is primarily an effort to learn something. When I play a .wav file with xmms, it is fine, but when I try: # cat file.wav > /dev/dsp it seems to play at half speed (pitch is very low, playing speed very slow). Is the command above the best way to do a simple test of sound? Why should sending the file to dsp not play correctly? Why won't this test work at all with .mid or .voc files? What should I be reading that might address questions such as these? I'm running ALSA under debian sarge 2.6.8-1-386, with an Audigy Gamer card. I've plenty of hardware resources available. Haines Brown |
From: Lee R. <rlr...@jo...> - 2004-11-30 18:39:01
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On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 13:04 -0500, Haines Brown wrote: > # cat file.wav > /dev/dsp > > it seems to play at half speed (pitch is very low, playing speed very > slow). > > Is the command above the best way to do a simple test of sound? Why > should sending the file to dsp not play correctly? No, that is the way to do it with the deprecated OSS API. It seems like a convenient, Unixy way to play sounds but there are many problems with it. The ALSA way is "aplay file.wav". Does this work? Lee |
From: <br...@ha...> - 2004-11-30 20:35:14
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> On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 13:04 -0500, Haines Brown wrote: > > # cat file.wav > /dev/dsp > > > > it seems to play at half speed (pitch is very low, playing speed very > > slow). > > > > Is the command above the best way to do a simple test of sound? Why > > should sending the file to dsp not play correctly? > > No, that is the way to do it with the deprecated OSS API. It seems like > a convenient, Unixy way to play sounds but there are many problems with > it. > > The ALSA way is "aplay file.wav". Does this work? Yes, that worked fine. I find that it plays WAV and VOC, but not MID and WMA files (just screeches). Thanks. Can you recommend some introductory reading on the file formats and suitable players for them? Haines |
From: Erik de C. L. <eri...@me...> - 2004-11-30 20:52:03
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On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 15:05:56 -0500 (EST) br...@ha... (Haines Brown) wrote: > Yes, that worked fine. I find that it plays WAV and VOC, but not MID > and WMA files (just screeches). Thanks. There is a program bundled with libsndfile: http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile/ which plays a large assortment of file types, but unfortunately not WMA or MID. Erik -- +-----------------------------------------------------------+ Erik de Castro Lopo no...@me... (Yes it's valid) +-----------------------------------------------------------+ Never argue with stupid people. They'll just drag you down to their level and beat you with experience |
From: Lee R. <rlr...@jo...> - 2004-11-30 21:13:34
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On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 15:05 -0500, Haines Brown wrote: > > On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 13:04 -0500, Haines Brown wrote: > > > # cat file.wav > /dev/dsp > > > > > > it seems to play at half speed (pitch is very low, playing speed very > > > slow). > > > > > > Is the command above the best way to do a simple test of sound? Why > > > should sending the file to dsp not play correctly? > > > > No, that is the way to do it with the deprecated OSS API. It seems like > > a convenient, Unixy way to play sounds but there are many problems with > > it. > > > > The ALSA way is "aplay file.wav". Does this work? > > Yes, that worked fine. I find that it plays WAV and VOC, but not MID > and WMA files (just screeches). Thanks. Hmm, my point about the OSS api notwithstanding, seems like cat foo.wav > /dev/dsp should work, if aplay groks the format. It seems to be getting the sample rate wrong. I am cc'ing alsa-devel. What's the sample rate of your .wav file? Do you get the same results with other sample rates? This could be a bug in the OSS emulation layer. Lee |
From: Takashi I. <ti...@su...> - 2004-12-01 10:55:44
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At Tue, 30 Nov 2004 16:02:48 -0500, Lee Revell wrote: > > On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 15:05 -0500, Haines Brown wrote: > > > On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 13:04 -0500, Haines Brown wrote: > > > > # cat file.wav > /dev/dsp > > > > > > > > it seems to play at half speed (pitch is very low, playing speed very > > > > slow). > > > > > > > > Is the command above the best way to do a simple test of sound? Why > > > > should sending the file to dsp not play correctly? > > > > > > No, that is the way to do it with the deprecated OSS API. It seems like > > > a convenient, Unixy way to play sounds but there are many problems with > > > it. > > > > > > The ALSA way is "aplay file.wav". Does this work? > > > > Yes, that worked fine. I find that it plays WAV and VOC, but not MID > > and WMA files (just screeches). Thanks. > > Hmm, my point about the OSS api notwithstanding, seems like cat foo.wav > > /dev/dsp should work, if aplay groks the format. It seems to be > getting the sample rate wrong. I am cc'ing alsa-devel. "cat > /dev/dsp" itself doesn't parse the format but just handles as if a raw PCM data. It is pretty casual that it worked somehow. Takashi |
From: Erik de C. L. <eri...@me...> - 2004-11-30 21:18:52
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On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 16:02:48 -0500 Lee Revell <rlr...@jo...> wrote: > Hmm, my point about the OSS api notwithstanding, seems like cat foo.wav > > /dev/dsp should work, if aplay groks the format. It seems to be > getting the sample rate wrong. I am cc'ing alsa-devel. A WAV file contains 44 plus bytes of header information like channel count, bitwidth, encoding and sample rate. Are you suggesting that /dev/dsp parse WAV headers? > This could be a bug in the OSS emulation layer. Sorry, "cat a.wav >/dev/dsp" should not work. Erik -- +-----------------------------------------------------------+ Erik de Castro Lopo no...@me... (Yes it's valid) +-----------------------------------------------------------+ "The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window." - Stephen King |
From: Lee R. <rlr...@jo...> - 2004-11-30 21:48:14
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On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 08:18 +1100, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: > > This could be a bug in the OSS emulation layer. > > Sorry, "cat a.wav >/dev/dsp" should not work. Makes sense, I gues it has no way of knowing. So that only ever worked with one sample rate, 22050Hz or something? It has been a while since I used OSS but I don't remember having this problem. Weird... Lee |
From: Florian S. <mis...@gm...> - 2004-11-30 23:09:16
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On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 16:48:09 -0500 Lee Revell <rlr...@jo...> wrote: > On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 08:18 +1100, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: > > > This could be a bug in the OSS emulation layer. > > > > Sorry, "cat a.wav >/dev/dsp" should not work. > > Makes sense, I gues it has no way of knowing. So that only ever worked > with one sample rate, 22050Hz or something? It has been a while since I > used OSS but I don't remember having this problem. Weird... > > Lee It's not weird at all. the program cat does not use the right ioctl's to setup the /dev/dsp device prior to sending the data. By chance the oss device file configuration matched by large the one required by the format of the source file (thus the playback at half speed instead of, for example, some horrible noise). Flo |
From: Lee R. <rlr...@jo...> - 2004-11-30 22:10:40
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On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 23:11 +0100, Florian Schmidt wrote: > It's not weird at all. Yeah it makes perfect sense actually, it's just weird I never noticed it ;-) Lee |
From: Brian L S. <br...@ga...> - 2004-12-01 14:56:55
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I have this problem too - but probably others causing it. aplay -D spdif /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav works fine. aplay -D /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav gives the following error: ALSA lib pcm.c:1975:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav aplay: main:508: audio open error: No such file or directory cat /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav > /dev/dsp makes no sound and hangs for 55 seconds on this 2.5 second sample. They both worked before I installed 1.0.7. However, I also installed the OSS compatibility libs this time. Also when I run alsaconf now it finds 2 cards even though I only have 1. emu10k1 Creative ... legacy Probe legacy ISA chips I suspect this second device is the tiny speaker on my motherboard, no? Is it getting all the attention? Except for when I specify spdif on the command line "alsaplayer -d spdif ..." none of my audio apps work. What gives here? Anybody know? Everything USED to work. my .asoundrc is as suggested for my card (Audigy2 Platinum): pcm.emu10k1 { type hw card 0 } ctl.emu10k1 { type hw card 0 } thanks guys, brian On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 16:02, Lee Revell wrote: > On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 15:05 -0500, Haines Brown wrote: > > > On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 13:04 -0500, Haines Brown wrote: > > > > # cat file.wav > /dev/dsp > > > > > > > > it seems to play at half speed (pitch is very low, playing speed very > > > > slow). > > > > > > > > Is the command above the best way to do a simple test of sound? Why > > > > should sending the file to dsp not play correctly? > > > > > > No, that is the way to do it with the deprecated OSS API. It seems like > > > a convenient, Unixy way to play sounds but there are many problems with > > > it. > > > > > > The ALSA way is "aplay file.wav". Does this work? > > > > Yes, that worked fine. I find that it plays WAV and VOC, but not MID > > and WMA files (just screeches). Thanks. > > Hmm, my point about the OSS api notwithstanding, seems like cat foo.wav > > /dev/dsp should work, if aplay groks the format. It seems to be > getting the sample rate wrong. I am cc'ing alsa-devel. > > What's the sample rate of your .wav file? Do you get the same results > with other sample rates? > > This could be a bug in the OSS emulation layer. > > Lee > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide > Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. > Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. > http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ > _______________________________________________ > Alsa-user mailing list > Als...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user |
From: Takashi I. <ti...@su...> - 2004-12-01 15:04:34
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At Wed, 01 Dec 2004 09:56:52 -0500, Brian L Scipioni wrote: > > I have this problem too - but probably others causing it. > > aplay -D spdif /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav works fine. > > aplay -D /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav gives the following error: > > ALSA lib pcm.c:1975:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav > aplay: main:508: audio open error: No such file or directory -D option requires an argument. In the second case, you didn't pass it so the wav file name is parsed as the device name. > cat /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav > /dev/dsp > makes no sound and hangs for 55 seconds on this 2.5 second sample. Most likely the device is simply blocked by others. This behavior was changed recently to be non-blocking mode, BTW. Takashi |
From: Brian L S. <br...@ga...> - 2004-12-01 17:58:15
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oops! I meant to run aplay /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav (without the -D of course, duh!) this gives no output although aplay -D spdif /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav does In previous versions of ALSA this (without specifying spdif) worked. Have default devices changed? you write: .... blocked by others This behavior was changed recently to be non-blocking mode What was changed to non-blocking mode? /dev/dsp or other devices. could the legacy card that alsaconf found be my tiny motherboard speaker? If so why does it get in the way now - it did not before. I have alias sound-slot-1 off in my modules.conf because my system log periodically complains that sound-slot-1 is not found even though i have only one card thanks, sorry for the bevy of questions, brian On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 10: > At Wed, 01 Dec 2004 09:56:52 -0500, > Brian L Scipioni wrote: > > > > I have this problem too - but probably others causing it. > > > > aplay -D spdif /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav works fine. > > > > aplay -D /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav gives the following error: > > > > ALSA lib pcm.c:1975:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav > > aplay: main:508: audio open error: No such file or directory > > -D option requires an argument. In the second case, you didn't pass > it so the wav file name is parsed as the device name. > > > cat /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav > /dev/dsp > > makes no sound and hangs for 55 seconds on this 2.5 second sample. > > Most likely the device is simply blocked by others. > This behavior was changed recently to be non-blocking mode, BTW. > > > Takashi -- Brian L Scipioni 909 Austin Ave Atlanta, GA 30307 home: 404.525.8911 cell: 404.771.3740 br...@ga... |