"Choppy" sound - Woody, 2.4.0-test11 kernel, xmms & esd
I don't seem to be the only one having this problem, but I have isolated
a test case:
Hardware: SoundBlaster AWE64 ISA PnP, IDE drives
Distro: Debian Potato + Woody etc. etc. etc.
Kernel: 2.2.18pre21 and 2.4.0-test11 (from debian kernel-source
packages)
Sound: OSS/Lite SB16/AWE32 drivers configured as kernel modules
XMMS:
xmms 1.2.4-helix1
ESD:
esound 0.2.20-2
esound-common 0.2.22-2
libesd0 0.2.20-2
1) Under kernel 2.2.18pre21, XMMS can play using the eSound plugin (i.e.
via esd) quite happily.
(although I get kernel messages at random about DMA timeout to sound
card thru possible IRQ conflicts, which I traced to heavy disk
utilisation periods and therefore something up the spout with my ide
config - everything else on the system "freezes" at the same time also)
2) Under kernel 2.4.0-test11, XMMS->eSound still works, but the sound is
"choppy" - broken up into audible chunks. No amount of tweaking the
eSound plugin's buffering or pre-load settings will eliminate this,
however it's possible to make it far, far worse.
Under this scenario, "normal" Gnome events will play thru esd fine (no
choppiness) - basically anything that's passed to esd as a file is OK,
but stream playback suffers the chop. Using XMMS->OSS Driver also plays
back audio just fine but requires esd to be put into standby.
My question is therefore: Can anyone else reproduce this, and can
anyone *fix* this? (tweaks to esound / XMMS settings perhaps?)
I have tried loading /dev/shm as suggested in the kernel documentation
since I thought it possible XMMS was communicating to ESD via shared
memory. This makes no discernable difference.
I apologise for taking up your valuable time..
Regards,
--
Matthew Exley
henley@guided-naafi.demon.co.uk
Things you never want to hear a Sysadmin say. No. 1: 'Uh-oh....'
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