[LAU] xruns no matter what

[Len Ovens]

On Sat, September 15, 2012 5:35 am, Sebastian Rose wrote:
> On 14/09/12 21:21, Jeremy Jongepier wrote:
>> On 09/14/2012 07:14 PM, Sebastian Rose wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I'm quite a bit puzzled and so I'm hoping to find something I haven't
>>> considered yet. I'm using a FireWire Saffire LE Audio Interface,
>>> connected to the following PCI card: NEC Corporation uPD72873
>>> [Firewarden] IEEE1394a OHCI 1.1 Link/2-port PHY Controller (rev 01).
>>>
>>
>> http://subversion.ffado.org/wiki/HostControllers#NEC
>>
>> Your controller is marked as "problematic" but if it worked before so
>> there is something going on.
>>
>>> Software information: ffado built from svn, jack 1.9.8, kernel 3.5.3
>>> PREEMT (no realtime patch) or 3.4.9-rt17 (with realtime patch), libraw
>>> 2.1.0.
>>>
>>> No matter what I configure jack to run with, I get regular xruns every
>>> few seconds whilst doing nothing. The last settings I tried were:
>>>
>>> Frames/Period: 4096
>>> Sample Rate: 96000
>>> Periods/Buffer: 3
>>> (Latency: 128ms)
>>>
>>
>> Did you also try lower frames/period settings? And running Jack with the
>> -S option? And what prio does Jack have? Do the xruns come in burst or
>> all the time? Which exact FFADO svn checkout are you using?
>
> This is what irritates me the most: If I change the settings (e.g.
> setting frames/period to 512) I get exactly the same constant behaviour:
> 14:31:09.787 XRUN callback (1).
> 14:31:22.482 XRUN callback (2).
> 14:31:26.495 XRUN callback (3).
> 14:31:29.025 XRUN callback (4).
> 14:31:30.185 XRUN callback (5).
>

I understand you have no wireless, but there may be something else that
runs all the time that is interfering. I am going to talk about my
wireless just because that was what got me, but it may apply to something
else in your system. I had problems with my wireless giving xruns about
once a minute... so I thought turn wireless off. This actually made things
a lot worse with xruns every 5 seconds. I had to unload the kernel module
for the wireless HW. Perhaps look through all the processes that are
running, start with services and look for services you don't need to run
(cron, mysql, netman, cups etc) and shut them off... maybe even services
you think you do need. Go through the whole list of kernel modules that
are loaded and try unloading them one at a time to see if there is one
that when gone corrects this (removing audio related modules may not be
helpful... but those related to an internal audio card might). May be try
booting to the login screen and using ctl-alt-F1 grab a console and try
running jack from the commandline  and see if that helps (if so there is
something running in you session user space that is problematic).

I am not suggesting you would run that way, but that it may help you find
out where to look. This is a bit of a shotgun approach... but may be
something that would help.... Do these things one at a time.

Just thinking about this... if you are using a firewire device that goes
directly to jack is alsa used at all? Maybe all the alsa kernel modules
can be unloaded as they would only be used by your internal card. I don't
know if there are some audio modules that need to be around to use the
alsa end of MIDI stuff either, but right now you need audio to work right.



-- 
Len Ovens
www.OvenWerks.net