[Alsa-user] RE: Hammerfall woes

[Ivica B. <ic...@fu...>]

> >As far as the ardour is concerned, when I start it with -D rme9652 -i
8
> >-o 8 flags, and press play it only plays a quick "click-like" snippet
of
> >a sound and immediately stops (no xruns reported). Why is this
happening
> >(I am using the 4-6 days old CVS version)?
> 
> no idea. your description sort of implies you can record with ardour
> ... or did you just insert a pre-existing soundfile?

I inserted pre-existing soundfile. What is also interesting that when
the sound stops it is also pretending as if I pressed the stop button
(it does not freeze or continue to pretend as if it is playing sound). I
will try the latest cvs as well as recompile the alsa drivers in hope
that will make it work.



> the hammerfall cannot do this. the hammerfall-DSP can do matrix
> routing of signals between channels, but it does not mix software
> streams down to a channel.

Crap! :-) So does this mean that RME card cannot be accessed from
multiple applications at the same time? This is one of the most annoying
limitations Linux audio architecture has had ever! It automatically
eliminates any kind of real-time multi-channel performance capability
where one wants to utilize multiple processes (i.e. pd, jmax and cmix
running at the same time). Even the old SGI's had this solved in a very
elegant fashion, needless to mention OS X or Windows (yes, I know, I
know, at the expense of latency, but at least I was not limited to using
one app at the time)... It seems that if someone wants to do a
multi-channel installation using linux and is interested in
live/interactive music, the best bet would be to purchase several SBlive
cards (with their horrid resampling stuff) and use them for mixing
(unfortunately none of them come as laptop models).

Do you know whether this software mixing stuff done in SBLive soundcard
is done in hardware or in software that the creative has released?

If it is in software, then someone could easily reverse-engineer it and
find out how they've done it, which would greatly help make other
drivers behave in the same fashion.

Is there a way for artsd to be aware of the multiple channels RME card
has and for artsd to provide software downmixing despite the fact RME
has no mixer?




> i would note in passing that there are people in the SF bay area who
> are prepared to pay US$600-$1000 to have machines set up to run linux
> audio software. its not a trivial thing to do, despite what you may
> hope for and might have read. in fact, its no more or less trivial
> than getting windows/macos setup for proper operation with audio
> software.

I am somewhat aware of this, but being primarily a musician, I am
growing extremely tired of doing continuous maintenance work instead of
composing. All work and no play makes...<feel free to add the rest> :-(

Ico