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alsa-driver package

Ubuntu 14.04 Audigy2 alsa + pulseaudio, recording

Asked by Florin Gherendi

On my Audigy 2 ZS Platinum card, using SP-DIF coax output from LiveDrive panel with PulseAudio, inputs are not monitored, only PCM issues sound. PulseAudio does not offer any other input than "Mic" for recording / input; Trying to bypass PulseAudio and record directly from Alsa also does the same thing, cannot use any other input than Mic for recording. Even the wavetable synth does not give any sound, no matter what soundfont I am loading. External MIDI port works well.

Previously I had a Mandriva 2006.0 where everything worked like a charm, but I had to drop it for obvious reasons.

The new modules.d setup of Ubuntu 14.04 seems quite an overkill compared to what I used to have on Mandriva, too many config files, too many things blacklisted without explanation (OSS emulation layer is also blacklisted; is there a specific reason for that?). Also, in the Gnome alsamixer, recording selection is no longer available, as it used to be in Mandriva, and also the sample rate selection disappeared (ok, it's Gnome 3 vs Gnome 2, but what would be the reason to make so many features disappear?).

I hoped to get it work fast but it isn't that obvious with so many things changed, maybe somebody could give me a hint. Is it possible that PulseAudio prevents Alsa from working properly with this card?

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

What is the output of:

wget -O alsa-info.sh http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh && chmod +x ./alsa-info.sh && ./alsa-info.sh --upload

Thanks

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Florin Gherendi (florin-gf) said : 		#2

On 03/24/2015 12:41 PM, actionparsnip wrote:
> +x ./alsa-info.sh && ./alsa-info.sh --upload

Thank you for your answer.
The upload of my ALSA info can be found here:

http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=de48208d6c0a33bab9d2e5c1bf97d8ddb46676e5

The PulseAudio appears as not running because I did the operation
remotely by ssh and X server is not running; if it is necessary that
repeat it with PulseAudio running I could do it in a few hours (now I am
not at home).

Revision history for this message
Florin Gherendi (florin-gf) said : 		#3

On 03/24/2015 12:41 PM, actionparsnip wrote:
> Your question #264105 on alsa-driver in Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+question/264105
>
> Status: Open => Needs information
>
> actionparsnip requested more information:
> What is the output of:
>
> wget -O alsa-info.sh http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh && chmod
> +x ./alsa-info.sh && ./alsa-info.sh --upload
>
> Thanks
>
 New updates after an evening of tackling : actually it seems to be
rather a stability problem than things not working.
This e-mail will be rather long...

Indeed, there is no input monitoring when selecting IEC958 output+Analog
Stereo Input profile in pavucontrol; only Mic input works and records
correctly; I tried a recording with an attenuator and it went well,
except some hum/ripple that was probably caused because the signal
source was very high level (a digital piano), the attenuator very strong
and the cable after it very long; anyway Mic input is not an option
because of the poor S/N ratio.

Monitoring starts to work on all inputs (very crappy and noisy; latency
problems?) when selecting Analog Stereo Duplex profile; the noise
appears immediately after inserting an RCA plug in any "right" channel
and looks like sampling noise, not hum or ripple; it is stronger when
the input signal is stronger. "Left" channel doesn't do that, surprisingly.
When using audacity, it will record from MIC ADC (hw:1,1) and ADC
Capture (hw:1,0) but with the same digital noise, and the recording
playback is always double speed, no matter what sample rate I select for
recording. Multichannel Capture (hw:1,2) does not work for recording,
and trying to select it while audacity has an output selected on the
same card will sometimes hang the system.
Gnome Sound Recorder cannot be "convinced" to record anything.

The weird noise (sampling or latency) disappeared after selecting p16v
as input and output in audacity and then coming back to the usual ports.
1 of tree such movements will hang the system.
p16v recording never worked, even with HD capture enabled in mixer.

The playback speed of the resulting recording remains double (some input
capture bitrate setting problem?).
Unfortunately I can't find any way for setting the sample rate
(gnome-alsamixer was able to do it in Mandriva 2006, and I had
recompiled the driver with 96kHz enabled; it was working good at that time!)

Also, neither in MIC ADC capture nor in Multichannel Capture, recording
from internal wavetable synth doesn't work, even if monitoring started
to work in Analog Stereo Duplex pulseaudio profile

Is this some incompatibility between pulseaudio and alsa for this card?
or some card latency problems? or a compatibility problem with the 64bit
lowlatency kernel that I use?

More info about my rather old hardware (but was quite good when this
sound card appeared):
Albatron K8NF4 motherboard, with AMD Athlon64 3000+ CPU

And the updated alsa-info while logged on X window/Gnome session:
http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=2fef20dbdf54cf893c907f3f598104e32441df4c

Thank you again
Florin

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#4

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

Revision history for this message
Florin Gherendi (florin-gf) said : 		#5

Still could not find a solution to make it work in a stable way

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#6

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.