[LAD] Help w/ debian report of mudita24 meters not working?

[Niels Mayer]

Re  http://code.google.com/p/mudita24/issues/detail?id=6

In http://code.google.com/p/mudita24/issues/detail?id=6#c5
tvrtko at ursulin wrote:
> I had a small peak in your code and it looks you reference this control by name, not numid, so the bug is probably somewhere else. I'll grab the current version and give it a spin...
> [...]
> Right, have 1.1.0 14 runnig now. A more detailed description of the bug is that meters seem to be sampled once on startup but then they are otherwise stuck/static. Pressing "Reset Peaks" clears them and puts in to "(Off)" state.

.............

Hunch: if the meters work once, the meters work, IMHO. This is a
clocking issue. Also, if talking of the level of the "Digital Mixer"
meter to the left, you have to make sure that the inputs to the
digital mixer are "live." However the mention of "stuck state" means
the ICE1712 metering registers are putting out DC at the digital level
that they were at when they lost clock.

The issue is probably somewhere else. I've seen this sort of thing
happen before with the ICE1712 chips when they're "locked up" waiting
for clocking, perhaps because the external spdif input  in "Hardware
Settings"->"Master Clock"->"S/PDIF In" is selected. Even more likely,
there's a lockup,  because "Multi Track Rate Locking" or "Multi Track
Rate Reset" are selected in "Hardware Settings". Deselect, kill any
processes using the devices, and start over again.

For details, see http://alsa.cybermirror.org/manuals/icensemble/envy24.pdf :-)

The lockup will "stick" if the audio device is in use, for example if
pulseaudio has grabbed it, or if it's still lingering around in some
spinning or zombie jackd. So changing the settings in the ICE1712
control panel may not actually take effect until the device is
relinquished and can be overridden out of it's locked state via the
control panel.

Note that this is all said as a hunch. I am not even running an OS
that supports the latest GTK changes and I am a Fedora user so there's
little chance I'll switch to Ubuntu without getting paid for it. So I
guess I'll find out if it's related to later versions of ALSA, GTK, or
Linux next time I setup a new machine.... and then I'll stick the
Terratec and it's lovely enclosed Yamaha DB50XG clone (NEC XR385) into
the new machine, pull down the latest mudita24 from SVN and give it a
try again.

-- Niels
http://nielsmayer.com