[Christmas] Both ALSA and OSS sound devices

[Nicolas Boullis]

Hi,

Santa Claus brought a new present to my christmas tree: a patch that
allows the em8300 driver to create both the OSS- and ALSA-style audio
devices.

I remember some people complained that they had to choose their
audio-device style when loading the module. They won't have to choose
any longer!

Note that I am currently far from my H+ and DXR3 boards; although Santa
Claus's patch looks fine as far as I can see, I could only check that it
compiles fine.

The patch was committed to mercurial. I also generated a tarball
available at
  http://dxr3.sourceforge.net/download/em8300-0.17.2-hg7b09e52604bc.tar.gz
with a detached gnuPG signature at
  http://dxr3.sourceforge.net/download/em8300-0.17.2-hg7b09e52604bc.tar.gz.sig

The patch is somewhat invasive; it would be nice if as many people as
possible could give it a try (even if you only use a style of audio
device). Please give it a try and report back!


Merry Christmas,

Nicolas


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[Jure Pečar]

On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 23:44:32 +0100
Nicolas Boullis <nboullis@...> wrote:

> The patch is somewhat invasive; it would be nice if as many people as
> possible could give it a try (even if you only use a style of audio
> device). Please give it a try and report back!

Still no difference regarding missing alsa devices here:

root@silence:~/em8300-0.17.2-hg/em8300setup# modprobe em8300
audio_driver=alsa
root@silence:~/em8300-0.17.2-hg/em8300setup# ./em8300setup Microcode
uploaded to /dev/em8300-0 Current settings are:
Video Aspect Audio Spu
PAL 4:3 ANALOG OFF
root@silence:~/em8300-0.17.2-hg/em8300setup#
cat /sys/module/em8300/parameters/audio_driver alsa,oss,oss,oss
root@silence:~/em8300-0.17.2-hg/em8300setup# cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [NVidia         ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
                      HDA NVidia at 0xfebd8000 irq 16

However, now it does work as oss in this case, previously it did not.

I hope to find time to upgrade to ubuntu 8.10 before the new year to see if
it changes this situation ...


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[Jan Willies]

Hi Nicolas,

Nicolas Boullis schrieb:
> The patch is somewhat invasive; it would be nice if as many people as
> possible could give it a try (even if you only use a style of audio
> device). Please give it a try and report back!

OSS plays fine but I can't get ALSA to work. I can't use alsaplayer or
alsamixer:

[jan@server em8300-nboullis]$ alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or
directory

[root@server ~]# cat /sys/module/em8300/parameters/audio_driver
alsa,alsa,alsa,alsa

[root@server ~]# cat /proc/asound/cards
  0 [EM8300         ]: EM8300 - Sigma Designs' EM8300
                       Sigma Designs' EM8300

[jan@server modules]$ ll /dev/dsp
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9  2. Jan 12:07 /dev/dsp -> sound/dsp

Jan  2 12:03:21 server Sigma Designs EM8300 0000:02:05.0: PCI INT A ->
GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
Jan  2 12:03:21 server em8300-0: EM8300 8300 (rev 2) <6>bus: 2, devfn:
40, irq: 17, <6>memory: 0xf4100000.
Jan  2 12:03:21 server em8300-0: mapped-memory at 0xd0f80000
Jan  2 12:03:21 server em8300-0: using MTRR
Jan  2 12:03:21 server i2c-adapter i2c-5: sendbytes: NAK bailout.
Jan  2 12:03:21 server em8300-0: unable to identify model...
Jan  2 12:03:21 server em8300-0: Chip revision: 2
Jan  2 12:03:21 server adv717x.o: ADV7175A chip detected
Jan  2 12:03:21 server unable to register OSS PCM device 0:0

This is on kernel 2.6.28

btw, http://dxr3.sourceforge.net/hg/em8300-nboullis is somehow b0rked.
hg pull doesn't work.


- jan

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[Nicolas Boullis]

Hi Jan,

On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 12:11:37PM +0100, Jan Willies wrote:
>
> OSS plays fine

That's already good news! :-)

> but I can't get ALSA to work. I can't use alsaplayer or
> alsamixer:
>
> [jan@server em8300-nboullis]$ alsamixer
> alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or
> directory

Hmmm...
Did you use the ALSA-style audio device of the em8300 driver before?

The EM8300 chip has no hardware volume control so alsamixer is not
expected to find anything...
Well, not exacly in fact: if you have /usr/share/alsa/cards/EM8300.conf
installed (or wherever you preferred distro puts its ALSA configuration
files), you'll have software-emulated volume control. But unless I'm
mistaken, it requires that the PCM device is open (or has been opened).

What if you try to play some sound with
  aplay -D default:CARD=EM8300
? (I hope the syntax is good, I'm still away from my H+ and DXR3
boards...)


> [root@server ~]# cat /sys/module/em8300/parameters/audio_driver
> alsa,alsa,alsa,alsa

This module option is now supposed to be a no-op...


> Jan  2 12:03:21 server Sigma Designs EM8300 0000:02:05.0: PCI INT A ->
> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
> Jan  2 12:03:21 server em8300-0: EM8300 8300 (rev 2) <6>bus: 2, devfn:
> 40, irq: 17, <6>memory: 0xf4100000.
> Jan  2 12:03:21 server em8300-0: mapped-memory at 0xd0f80000
> Jan  2 12:03:21 server em8300-0: using MTRR
> Jan  2 12:03:21 server i2c-adapter i2c-5: sendbytes: NAK bailout.

Hmmm... Also that's unreated to sound, this is an interesting
information: it seems that your EEPROM chip did not acknowledge the i2c
communication... :-/


> btw, http://dxr3.sourceforge.net/hg/em8300-nboullis is somehow b0rked.
> hg pull doesn't work.

It's been (deliberately?) broken since the change of SourceForge's web
server... :-(
I moved this repository to
  http://freehg.org/u/nboullis/em8300/


Cheers,

Nicolas

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[Jan Willies]

Hi Nicolas,

Nicolas Boullis schrieb:

> On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 12:11:37PM +0100, Jan Willies wrote:
>> but I can't get ALSA to work. I can't use alsaplayer or
>> alsamixer:
>>
>> [jan@server em8300-nboullis]$ alsamixer
>> alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or
>> directory
>
> Hmmm...
> Did you use the ALSA-style audio device of the em8300 driver before?

Nope, I've always used OSS (because of vdr-plugin-dxr3) although I
remember I tried it some month ago:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.alsa.devel/51290/focus=2270

I could hear sound through the analog jack but not via optical back then.

> The EM8300 chip has no hardware volume control so alsamixer is not
> expected to find anything...
> Well, not exacly in fact: if you have /usr/share/alsa/cards/EM8300.conf
> installed (or wherever you preferred distro puts its ALSA configuration
> files), you'll have software-emulated volume control. But unless I'm
> mistaken, it requires that the PCM device is open (or has been opened).

/usr/share/alsa/cards/EM8300.conf is in place.

> What if you try to play some sound with
>   aplay -D default:CARD=EM8300
> ? (I hope the syntax is good, I'm still away from my H+ and DXR3
> boards...)

[jan@server modules]$ LANG=C aplay -D default:CARD=EM8300
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card 'EM8300'
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function
snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat
returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer
returned error: No such device
ALSA lib conf.c:3985:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such device
ALSA lib pcm.c:2202:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default:CARD=EM8300
aplay: main:590: audio open error: No such device

[jan@server modules]$ aplay -lL
aplay: device_list:217: no soundcards found...

[jan@server modules]$ LANG=C alsaplayer --verbose -o alsa -d plughw:0,0
bla.mp3
AlsaPlayer 0.99.80
(C) 1999-2004 Andy Lo A Foe <andy@...> and others.
ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:1429:(_snd_pcm_hw_open) Invalid value for card
snd_pcm_open: No such file or directory (plughw:0,0)
Failed to initialize plugin!
Failed to register plugin: /usr/lib/alsaplayer/output/libalsa_out.so
Failed to load output plugin "alsa". Trying defaults.
ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:1429:(_snd_pcm_hw_open) Invalid value for card
snd_pcm_open: No such file or directory (plughw:0,0)
Failed to initialize plugin!
/usr/lib/alsaplayer/output/libalsa_out.so failed to load

[jan@server modules]$ cat /proc/asound/devices
   0: [ 0]   : control
   1:        : sequencer
  16: [ 0- 0]: digital audio playback
  17: [ 0- 1]: digital audio playback
  33:        : timer

>> Jan  2 12:03:21 server Sigma Designs EM8300 0000:02:05.0: PCI INT A ->
>> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
>> Jan  2 12:03:21 server em8300-0: EM8300 8300 (rev 2) <6>bus: 2, devfn:
>> 40, irq: 17, <6>memory: 0xf4100000.
>> Jan  2 12:03:21 server em8300-0: mapped-memory at 0xd0f80000
>> Jan  2 12:03:21 server em8300-0: using MTRR
>> Jan  2 12:03:21 server i2c-adapter i2c-5: sendbytes: NAK bailout.
>
> Hmmm... Also that's unreated to sound, this is an interesting
> information: it seems that your EEPROM chip did not acknowledge the i2c
> communication... :-/

It's not always that I get these NAK bailout messages.


regards

- jan

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[Nicolas Boullis]

Hi Jan,

On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 11:05:27AM +0100, Jan Willies wrote:
>
> I could hear sound through the analog jack but not via optical back then.

When we are successful with analog, it should not be too complex to
switch to digital (but not optical) output...

>
> > The EM8300 chip has no hardware volume control so alsamixer is not
> > expected to find anything...
> > Well, not exacly in fact: if you have /usr/share/alsa/cards/EM8300.conf
> > installed (or wherever you preferred distro puts its ALSA configuration
> > files), you'll have software-emulated volume control. But unless I'm
> > mistaken, it requires that the PCM device is open (or has been opened).
>
> /usr/share/alsa/cards/EM8300.conf is in place.

That's fine.


> > What if you try to play some sound with
> >   aplay -D default:CARD=EM8300
> > ? (I hope the syntax is good, I'm still away from my H+ and DXR3
> > boards...)
>
> [jan@server modules]$ LANG=C aplay -D default:CARD=EM8300
(...)

Hmmm... my syntax must be broken. What about "default:EM8300",
"default:0" or simply "default"?
Not that I think you have to specify a file (probably uncompressed) to
play.


> [jan@server modules]$ aplay -lL
> aplay: device_list:217: no soundcards found...

That certainly does not seem good; I'll see later how it works on my
system (when I'm back home).

>
> [jan@server modules]$ LANG=C alsaplayer --verbose -o alsa -d plughw:0,0
> bla.mp3
(...)

It looks very bad.
I would not recommend using plughw since it does not unswap the left and
right channels, and also does not implement volume control.


> [jan@server modules]$ cat /proc/asound/devices
>    0: [ 0]   : control
>    1:        : sequencer
>   16: [ 0- 0]: digital audio playback
>   17: [ 0- 1]: digital audio playback
>   33:        : timer

At first sight, it looks fine.


> > Hmmm... Also that's unreated to sound, this is an interesting
> > information: it seems that your EEPROM chip did not acknowledge the i2c
> > communication... :-/
>
> It's not always that I get these NAK bailout messages.

It might be kernel-version dependant... I'll chec this as well...


Cheers,

Nicolas

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[Jan Willies]

Hi Nicolas,

Nicolas Boullis schrieb:
> On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 11:05:27AM +0100, Jan Willies wrote:
>> I could hear sound through the analog jack but not via optical back then.
>
> When we are successful with analog, it should not be too complex to
> switch to digital (but not optical) output...

Right, I meant digital output.

>> [jan@server modules]$ aplay -lL
>> aplay: device_list:217: no soundcards found...
>
> That certainly does not seem good; I'll see later how it works on my
> system (when I'm back home).

Ok, thanks.

>> [jan@server modules]$ LANG=C alsaplayer --verbose -o alsa -d plughw:0,0
>> bla.mp3
> (...)
>
> It looks very bad.

:/

> I would not recommend using plughw since it does not unswap the left and
> right channels, and also does not implement volume control.

It was recommended on the alsa list for reasons I didn't understand
anyway: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.alsa.devel/51290/focus=51291

>>> Hmmm... Also that's unreated to sound, this is an interesting
>>> information: it seems that your EEPROM chip did not acknowledge the i2c
>>> communication... :-/
>> It's not always that I get these NAK bailout messages.
>
> It might be kernel-version dependant... I'll chec this as well...

Hm maybe, but I rather meant that I don't get the message everytime I
load the module. Although most of the time.

I don't remember how it was on 2.6.27 and unfortunately my logs don't
reach that far back.


- jan

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[Nicolas Boullis]

Hi Jan,

On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 06:33:57PM +0100, Jan Willies wrote:
>
> > I would not recommend using plughw since it does not unswap the left and
> > right channels, and also does not implement volume control.
>
> It was recommended on the alsa list for reasons I didn't understand
> anyway: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.alsa.devel/51290/focus=51291

The EM8300 chip has several problems as a soundcard (for the analog
ouput):
 - it only supports 2 channels big-endian 16-bit data;
 - it only supports a few frequencies (as far as I remember 32kHz,
   44.1kHz and 48kHz);
 - the left and right channels are swapped;
 - no volume control.

As for the digital output:
 - it only supports big-endian IEC958 subframes;
 - it only supports a few frequencies;
 - no volume control.

All these problems can be solved in software. And what is great with
ALSA is that alsa-lib provides all that is required to solve all these
probems in userspace. Hence the kernel-space driver simply reflects what
the hardware supports.

Most userspace applications require a specific format, number of
channels and frequency.

When you use hw devices (like hw:0,0), it directly uses the kernel-space
driver, which generaly does not work because of the limitations of the
hardware.

When you use plughw devices (like plughw:0,0), it uses alsa-lib to adapt
the sound format, number of channels (and perhaps frequency as well) to
what the kernel-space driver supports). It works better since it solves
the worst problem, but you still have no volume control, and the left
and right channels are still swapped. Note that it only works for anaog
output since plughw does not understand IEC958 subframes.

To go further, you need a specific configuration, and that's exacty what
/usr/share/alsa/cards/EM8300.conf provides. With this configuration
in place, you should be able to use analog output with the
"default:EM8300" or "default:0" (if your EM8300 card is your first ALSA
audio card) device. As for digital output, "iec958:EM8300" or "iec958:0"
should work, but they lack volume control (because volume control is
impossible with digital pass-through of AC3 or DTS). With a specific
configuration, it should be possible to have volume control with a
digital output for PCM audio.

As for your problem I wonder whether your ALSA installation is fine...
What is you distro? Is it up-to-date?
Would it be possible for you to test your ALSA installation with a
different ("real") soundcard?


Cheers,

Nicolas

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[Jan Willies]

Hi Nicolas,

Nicolas Boullis schrieb:
> On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 06:33:57PM +0100, Jan Willies wrote:
>>> I would not recommend using plughw since it does not unswap the left and
>>> right channels, and also does not implement volume control.
>> It was recommended on the alsa list for reasons I didn't understand
>> anyway: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.alsa.devel/51290/focus=51291
>
> The EM8300 chip has several problems as a soundcard (for the analog
> ouput):
[...]

Thanks for taking the time to explain, it's now a lot clearer to me what
the whole stuff is about.

> As for your problem I wonder whether your ALSA installation is fine...
> What is you distro? Is it up-to-date?
> Would it be possible for you to test your ALSA installation with a
> different ("real") soundcard?

It happens you were right. My soundsystem was somehow b0rked. I tried
activating the internal soundcard and it gave me nothing too. There was
a distinct lack of /dev/snd/pcmC* without which alsa-lib couldn't work.

It seemed that I loaded the em8300 module too early (even before snd-*),
so after fixing that it works now!

http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=09e56a9e9fd045f96130e84cbf096c2d10922699

I can hear sound through the digital output with alsaplayer -o alsa -i
text -d iec958 :) and the vdr-plugin-dxr3 works too, so I guess you did
all the em8300 stuff right. Great work!


cheers

- jan

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[Nicolas Boullis]

Hi Jan,

On Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 12:29:01PM +0100, Jan Willies wrote:

>
> It happens you were right. My soundsystem was somehow b0rked. I tried
> activating the internal soundcard and it gave me nothing too. There was
> a distinct lack of /dev/snd/pcmC* without which alsa-lib couldn't work.
>
> It seemed that I loaded the em8300 module too early (even before snd-*),
> so after fixing that it works now!
>
> http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=09e56a9e9fd045f96130e84cbf096c2d10922699
>
> I can hear sound through the digital output with alsaplayer -o alsa -i
> text -d iec958 :) and the vdr-plugin-dxr3 works too, so I guess you did
> all the em8300 stuff right. Great work!

Ok, that's good news. Thanks for taking the time to test it!

I thought that the em8300 module would depend on the needed snd-*
modules... Did you use any special option to modprobe to allow loading
em8300 without the snd-* modules?


Cheers,

Nicolas

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[Jan Willies]

Hi Nicolas,

Nicolas Boullis schrieb:
> I thought that the em8300 module would depend on the needed snd-*
> modules... Did you use any special option to modprobe to allow loading
> em8300 without the snd-* modules?

I don't know how I managed it but that's the only reason I can think of.
Blocking the internal soundcard may have been a problem too. This _was_
my modules-line:

MODULES=(e100 em8300 ac97_bus snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm-oss snd-page-alloc
snd-pcm snd-timer snd snd-ac97-codec !snd-intel8x0 soundcore fuse aes-i586)

Or maybe my distro (Arch Linux) fscked the modules-dependancies up, or
it just was a faulty boot (I don't reboot that machine often).

This isn't run at boot time either, although I guess it should:

[jan@server ~]$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/em8300
alias char-major-121 em8300
install em8300 /sbin/modprobe adv717x && /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install
em8300 && sleep 2s && chown root:video /dev/em8300* && chmod 666
/sys/class/em8300/em8300-0/device/zoom
remove em8300 /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove em8300 && /sbin/modprobe
-r adv717x
options adv717x pixelport_16bit=0


- jan

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[Jure Pečar]

On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 21:48:01 +0100
Nicolas Boullis <nboullis@...> wrote:

> The EM8300 chip has several problems as a soundcard

But still it is one of the best sounding cards under linux that actually work well, thanks to your effort :)

I hope to get a preamp with spdif input later this year, so I can also play with digital output of em8300.


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[Nicolas Boullis]

Hi,

On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 02:01:40PM +0100, Jure Pečar wrote:
> On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 21:48:01 +0100
> Nicolas Boullis <nboullis@...> wrote:
>
> > The EM8300 chip has several problems as a soundcard
>
> But still it is one of the best sounding cards under linux that actually work well, thanks to your effort :)

I'm really surprised by this. Is it really better than modern soundcards
that support 24-bit samples at 96kHz?


Cheers,

Nicolas

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[Ville Skyttä]

On Friday 26 December 2008, Nicolas Boullis wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Santa Claus brought a new present to my christmas tree: a patch that
> allows the em8300 driver to create both the OSS- and ALSA-style audio
> devices.
[...]
> The patch is somewhat invasive; it would be nice if as many people as
> possible could give it a try (even if you only use a style of audio
> device). Please give it a try and report back!

I finally got around to testing this: current code from
http://freehg.org/u/nboullis/em8300/, Fedora 10's 2.6.27.24-170.2.68.fc10.i686
kernel, VDR with dxr3 plugin 0.2.9, so OSS only for now.  Audio is set to
digital out.

/dev/em8300* get created and sound works fine in VDR but I get this in syslog
when the module is loaded:

kernel: Sigma Designs EM8300 0000:02:04.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) ->
IRQ 16
kernel: em8300-0: EM8300 8300 (rev 2) <6>bus: 2, devfn: 32, irq: 16,
<6>memory: 0xe7000000.
kernel: em8300-0: mapped-memory at 0xe0c00000
kernel: em8300-0: using MTRR
kernel: em8300-0: Chip revision: 2
kernel: adv717x.o: ADV7170 chip detected
kernel: ALSA sound/core/oss/pcm_oss.c:2943: unable to register OSS PCM device
0:0


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