[LAD] Call for testing (final): ALSA driver for some firewire devices

Takashi Sakamoto o-takashi at sakamocchi.jp
Mon May 5 10:11:03 UTC 2014


Hi Matt,

(May 05 2014 12:49), M Murdock wrote:
> I am testing your FFADO and ALSA drivers for a ProjectMix I/O.  My goal is
> to get the hardware running in Ardour3 with both a firewire interface and
> MIDI controls working.  I hope this is possible presently.
>
> My configuration:
> Ubuntu 14.04 (recently upgraded to get kernel 3.13 for your ALSA driver)
> Installed the 3.11 firewire ALSA driver and the latest SVN FFADO driver
> I have disabled PulseAudio as described

Thanks for your trial. At first, I want to confirm which revision of 
codes you use. What is the latest commit in your local repository for 
ALSA drivers and which revision of FFADO you use?

> Firewire:
> Your ffado-mixer opens and recognizes the ProjectMix, but I am not able to
> see any reaction to the ffado-mixer sliders on the ProjectMix hardware.

Please get logs and report it to me. The 'ffado-mixer' request 
'ffado-dbus-server' process to execute I/O from/to devices. So what you 
do is to get logs from 'ffado-dbus-server'. Follow this instruction:
1. Close ffado-mixer
2. Open your favorite terminal
3. Kill processes of 'ffado-dbus-server' because 'ffado-mixer' starts 
the process with dbus help
   $ killall ffado-dbus-server
4. run ffado-dbus-server with verbose option
   $ ffado-dbus-server -v 6
5. run 'ffado-mixer'
   It doesn't matter to run it by GUI/CUI
6. read outputs from 'ffado-dbus-server' in the terminal

> ALSA:
> I installed the modules with dkms.  ALSA appears to identify the ProjectMix
> but I am not able to route sound through aplay or arecord.  I am not able to
> verify MIDI to or from the ProjectMix.

In ALSA side, logs are output in /var/log/syslog. So If you have 
problems, please refer to the file.

ProjectMix I/O (and Firewire 1814) can change its number of PCM channels 
according to which digital interfaces are selected for input/output.

So unless you don't know the rule, 'plughw' instead of 'hw' will be your 
help. Like:
  aplay -D plughw:ProjectMix /dev/urandom
  arecord -D plughw:ProjectMix /dev/null

If you want to switch digital interfaces for input/output, please use 
amixer/alsamixer:

$ amixer -c 1
Simple mixer control 'Clock Source',0
   Capabilities: enum
   Items: 'Internal with Digital Mute' 'Digital' 'Word Clock' 'Internal'
   Item0: 'Internal'
Simple mixer control 'Digital Input Interface',0
   Capabilities: enum
   Items: 'S/PDIF Optical' 'S/PDIF Coaxial' 'ADAT Optical'
   Item0: 'S/PDIF Coaxial'
Simple mixer control 'Digital Output Interface',0
   Capabilities: enum
   Items: 'S/PDIF Coaxial' 'ADAT Optical'
   Item0: 'S/PDIF Coaxial'
Simple mixer control 'Sync Status',0
   Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined
   Playback channels: Mono
   Mono: Playback [on]

MIDI functionality may work but there is an issue for Firewire 1814. So 
I guess ProjectMix I/O also has this issue because these devices are 
similar. For this issue, please see '2.Data rate for MIDI substream' in 
this post:
[alsa-devel] A Restriction and rest of issues for this patchsets
http://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2014-April/075912.html

Finally, I reccomend you to subscribe/post ffado-devel because there are 
some testers and users of this device.
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ffado-devel


Regards

Takashi Sakamoto
o-takashi at sakamocchi.jp



More information about the Linux-audio-dev mailing list