[linux-audio-user] El-Cheapo success with alsa lib 1.0.8 but not with 1.0.9

[Salvatore Di Pietro]

HI all,
I managed to combine 2 Sb Live (a 5.1 Digital and a 5.1 Player one)
in a single 4 in 4 out device following the El-Cheapo HOWTO.
The thing used to work flawlessly on my system:

Slackware 10.1
kernel 2.6.12.2 vanilla (but older versions worked equally well)
ALSA 1.0.8
JACK 0.99.0
all compiled from sources

AMD Athlon XP 3000+
AsRock K7S8X
SB Live! Digital 5.1
SB Live! Player 5.1
ForteMedia FM801
RTL8139
Matrox G450 DualHead AGP

every card runs on its own IRQ:

root at slack101-sal:/home/salvuz# cat /proc/interrupts
            CPU0
   0:    3067468    IO-APIC-edge  timer
   1:       4252    IO-APIC-edge  i8042
   8:          0    IO-APIC-edge  rtc
   9:          0   IO-APIC-level  acpi
  12:      68805    IO-APIC-edge  i8042
  14:     130386    IO-APIC-edge  ide0
  15:     107823    IO-APIC-edge  ide1
  16:          0   IO-APIC-level  FM801
  17:       2080   IO-APIC-level  eth0
  18:       1138   IO-APIC-level  EMU10K1
  19:          0   IO-APIC-level  EMU10K1
  20:          0   IO-APIC-level  ohci_hcd:usb2
  21:          0   IO-APIC-level  ohci_hcd:usb3
  23:          0   IO-APIC-level  ehci_hcd:usb1
NMI:          0
LOC:    3067418
ERR:          0
MIS:          0

With this setup I was used to little or no xruns even at 128 frames per 
buffer.

But upon upgrading to ALSA 1.0.9 (and later releases) I get (no matter 
if via command line or qjackctl):

root at slack101-sal:/home/salvuz# jackd -R -v -dalsa -d multi4
getting driver descriptor from /usr/lib/jack/jack_dummy.so
getting driver descriptor from /usr/lib/jack/jack_oss.so
getting driver descriptor from /usr/lib/jack/jack_alsa.so
jackd 0.99.0
Copyright 2001-2003 Paul Davis and others.
jackd comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details

registered builtin port type 32 bit float mono audio
running with uid=0 and euid=0, will not try to use capabilites
loading driver ..
new client: alsa_pcm, id = 1 type 1 @ 0x805bad0 fd = -1
creating alsa driver ... 
multi4|multi4|1024|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
configuring for 48000Hz, period = 1024 frames, buffer = 2 periods
Couldn't open multi4 for 32bit samples trying 24bit instead
Couldn't open multi4 for 24bit samples trying 16bit instead
Couldn't open multi4 for 32bit samples trying 24bit instead
Couldn't open multi4 for 24bit samples trying 16bit instead
new buffer size 1024
registered port alsa_pcm:capture_1, offset = 4096
registered port alsa_pcm:capture_2, offset = 8192
registered port alsa_pcm:capture_3, offset = 12288
registered port alsa_pcm:capture_4, offset = 16384
registered port alsa_pcm:playback_1, offset = 0
registered port alsa_pcm:playback_2, offset = 0
registered port alsa_pcm:playback_3, offset = 0
registered port alsa_pcm:playback_4, offset = 0
++ jack_rechain_graph():
client alsa_pcm: internal client, execution_order=0.
-- jack_rechain_graph()
4576 waiting for signals

[sits there for about seven seconds...]

jackd watchdog: timeout - killing jackd
Killed
root at slack101-sal:/home/salvuz#
zlorfik! :)

If I reinstall _only_ alsa-lib-1.0.8 (having removed alsa-lib-1.0.9)
keeping the reast of ALSA to 1.0.9, everything returned to work, so I 
think something changed in alsa lib 1.0.9 that causes trouble to this 
setup...

Anyone else tried building an El-Cheapo multi I/O and noticed the same 
thing with alsa-lib 1.0.8->1.0.9 ?

ciao
-- 
           salvuz
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