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Re: 24 bit usb sound on lenny



Thanks for your reply, Joel!

Joel Roth wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 07, 2009 at 03:54:41PM +0100, Johannes Wiedersich wrote:
>> Hallo all!
>>
>> On switching my usb sound card to 24bit audio, all applications using
>> the card will crash/segfault:
>>
>> $ aplay led_zeppelin-houses_of_the_holy-a.wav
>> Playing WAVE 'led_zeppelin-houses_of_the_holy-a.wav' : Signed 16 bit
>> Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Stereo
>> Segmentation fault
> 
> There are many wrinkles and ways of solving problems 
> with Linux audio.
> 
> At the ALSA level, the 'default' pcm device as provided by modern
> kernels automatically performs format conversion. Maybe some
> of the others, too. 
> 
> $ aplay -L
> 
> provides a list of your system's ALSA pcm sound devices.

$ aplay -L
surround40:CARD=USB2448,DEV=0
    PHASE 26 USB(24/48), USB Audio
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=USB2448,DEV=0
    PHASE 26 USB(24/48), USB Audio
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=USB2448,DEV=0
    PHASE 26 USB(24/48), USB Audio
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=USB2448,DEV=0
    PHASE 26 USB(24/48), USB Audio
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=USB2448,DEV=0
    PHASE 26 USB(24/48), USB Audio
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers

looks fine to me, but there is no line that looks like plain 'stereo'.

If I switch to 16 bit on the sound card, sound works and shows this:

$ aplay -L
default:CARD=USB1648
    PHASE 26 USB(16/48), USB Audio
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=USB1648,DEV=0
    PHASE 26 USB(16/48), USB Audio
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=USB1648,DEV=0
    PHASE 26 USB(16/48), USB Audio
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=USB1648,DEV=0
    PHASE 26 USB(16/48), USB Audio
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=USB1648,DEV=0
    PHASE 26 USB(16/48), USB Audio
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=USB1648,DEV=0
    PHASE 26 USB(16/48), USB Audio
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=USB1648,DEV=0
    PHASE 26 USB(16/48), USB Audio
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=USB1648,DEV=0
    PHASE 26 USB(16/48), USB Audio
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)

> Now for your system, you should reboot or unplug and replug
> your USB sound device after changing to 24-bit to ensure the
> ALSA driver reads the 24-bit configuration.

Done, redone and repeated again ;-)

So far without success. It seems to be either a config problem or a bug
(alsa or kernel?).

> You can also choose to specify in your $HOME/.asoundrc file what the
> output format to the soundcard should be for a particular
> device.

How to do that?

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/.asoundrc

shows how to set the sample rate, but that seems to fine, here.

> I find the Ecasound provides an easy way to handle
> format conversions. 
> 
> $ ecasound -i cd-stereo.wav -f:s24_le,2,44100 -o alsa,hw:0

Playing a wav with this command line works.

> Ecasound is a swiss-army knife of audio processing,
> can do many common audio processing tasks.
> 
>> kaffeine, amarok, xine etc. all just crash.
> 
> It sounds like a configuration problem, maybe ALSA
> needs to be told that your USB soundcard is set to 24 bits.

How to do that?

> This suggests that you are 99% there, since your ALSA driver is
> already taking care of converting the signal from 44100 to
> 48000 Hz.
> 
> Good luck with that last 1%. 24 bits will help if you
> are doing multitrack stuff. In which case you might
> consider Audacity (friendly GUI), Ardour (total pro)
> or even Nama (http://ecmd.infogami.com) which I have
> developed using Ecasound for audio processing.

Audacity doesn't crash :-) , however, my speakers start to beep and
crack in all unpleasant sounds imaginable, as soon as I start it
(without trying to play or record anything).

I should have told before, that the sound card works fine on 24 bit on
etch, but NOT on lenny. I just checked with the etch system of my girl
friend. There it works 'plug and play' without a glitch and without
having to configure anything.

Thanks,

Johannes

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