[linux-audio-user] ecasound help

[Kai Vehmanen]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 cv223 at comcast.net wrote:

> I'm trying to record multiple tracks with ecasound and a Delta 1010LT,
> while monitoring the process.  I tried the following ecasound command
> without luck (I'm new to ecasound):

The easiest way to achieve this is to use the soundcard's own mixer for
monitoring the incoming audio signals.

With Delta1010LT (and other ice17xx cards), launch envy24control and 
on the 'Monitor mixer' tab turn on volume for for "Hw in 1", "Hw in 2" and 
so on, and then on 'Patchbay / router' tab select "Digital Mix" as the 
source of "Hw out 1", and others.

With consumer cards, the same can be achieve by unmuting "Line in" (or 
"Mic in") and turning up their volume.

> ecasound -r -b:256 -a:1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 -f:16,8,48000 -i alsa,default \
> -a:1 -o mono-1.wav \
> -a:2 -o mono-2.wav -erc:2,1 \
> -a:3 -o mono-3.wav -erc:3,1 \
> -a:4 -o mono-4.wav -erc:4,1 \
> -a:5 -o mono-5.wav -erc:5,1 \
> -a:6 -o mono-6.wav -erc:6,1 \
> -a:7 -o mono-7.wav -erc:7,1 \
> -a:8 -o mono-8.wav -erc:8,1 \
> -a:all -o alsa,default

If you for some reason want to monitor audio specifically by routing the
audio through ecasound, the correct syntax would be:

ecasound -r -b:256 -a:1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,mon1 -f:16,8,48000 -i alsa,default \
 -f:16,1,48000 \
 -a:1 -o mono-1.wav \
 -a:2 -o mono-2.wav -erc:2,1 \
 -a:3 -o mono-3.wav -erc:3,1 \
 -a:4 -o mono-4.wav -erc:4,1 \
 -a:5 -o mono-5.wav -erc:5,1 \
 -a:6 -o mono-6.wav -erc:6,1 \
 -a:7 -o mono-7.wav -erc:7,1 \
 -a:8 -o mono-8.wav -erc:8,1 \
 -f:16,8,48000 \
 -a:mon1 -o alsa,default

I.e. we route the 8ch audio stream to mono chains 1-8, and to 8ch chain 
labeled 'mon1'. Next we write the mono chains to mono-X.wav files, and 
output the whole 8ch chain to the alsa output device.

> I can hear the inputs, but the mono-*.wav files are essentially empty 
> (44 bytes each).  If I remove the last line, the mono-*.wav files record 
> ok.  But, of course, I can't hear it while recording.  Can anybody tell 

As others already noted, you can only connect a chain to one output (same
applies for input). I really should add more runtime checks so that
ecasound would give a little more informative error messages in these 
scenarios.

-- 
 http://www.eca.cx
 Audio software for Linux!