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Julian Stacey

2008-Jan-11 06:43 UTC

sticky sound on 7 stable

Hi stable@
I have sticky sound flow on 2 different slowish laptops running 7
Stable, Sound plays for a few secs, then breaks for a fraction &
resumes, repeatedly.  I guess fault is not sound config, hence I'm
not posting multimedia@, but stable@ where I've seen other Sticky
7 response topics.

I have 3 test files:
-rwxr-xr-x   1 jhs  staff  32521108 Dec  9 18:01 1.avi*
-rw-r-----   1 jhs  staff   3859434 Dec  6 11:03 audio_01.mp3
-rw-r-----   1 jhs  staff  42535964 Dec  6 11:02 audio_01.wav

1.avi:        RIFF (little-endian) data, AVI, 320 x 240, ~15 fps, video: Motion
JPEG, audio: uncompressed PCM (mono, 11024 Hz)
audio_01.mp3: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 128 kBits, 44.1 kHz, JntStereo
audio_01.wav: RIFF (little-endian) data, WAVE audio, Microsoft PCM, 16 bit,
stereo 44100 Hz

1.avi is from my digital camera: a short movie.
	(nothing wrong with 1.avi on a faster laptop running 6.2-REL)
	mplayer plays it in bursts.
		screen is local, no ethernet activity,
		no other disc acrivity (makes etc)
		Only other processe I have are idle sshd & apache & such, 
		nothing active. No disc activity until I start the
		music player.
	on a dir of / thus no soft updates
	also on a dir of /usr with soft updates

mplayer *.wav	(plays fine on a faster 6.2 box)
	Plays normal speed on the slower CPU (where top shows 6 to
	0% free).  but occasional interruptions. ie sticky.
	(no pcmcia ethernet activity, I can control it via SLIP!)

	Plays slow on the faster CPU! (where top shows 10% free CPU)
	(unusual machine, 5 pcmcia slots, maybe irqs or other conf. screwed,
	thus pcmcia ethernet works.)
	Also interruptions.

ksmp3play audio_01.mp3	(plays fine on a faster 6.2 box)
	Really bad break up, this could be a different simpler problem ?
	Maybe my CPU can't decompress fast enough ?
	Maybe this not a FreeBSD problem ?
	I think I tried swapoff on all partitions, & then building
	a little ram disc for the mp3, no improvement.

Much other info on both laptops & their BSD conf. here:
	host=lapd CPU 166M 586 
  http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/hardware/digital/
	host=lapn CPU 133M 586 
  http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/hardware/laptops/dell_latitude_xpi_p133st/
Many dmesg & other debug info linked within, anything else you want
please just tell me debug command to run.  I'm happy to try src/ &
sys/ patches etc. Pref. based on 7-stable.

Both have /boot/loader.conf:
hw.ata.ata_dma="0"              # Essential else disk access fails.
	Could that be it ? 
	both report from xs atacontrol mode ad0
	current mode = PIO4

I dont know about HZ setting, or different schedulers, but happy
to try sysctls or tweak kernel configs if people suggest ideas ?
Should I be using rtprio or that SCHED/ULE whatever swapper ?

At least the same model Digital laptop
has played sound for others on older FreeBSD.

Ideas, comments, & TYFM URLs all welcome, Thanks !
Julian
--
Julian Stacey.  Munich Consultant: BSD Linux Unix.  http://berklix.com

Roland Smith

2008-Jan-11 08:53 UTC

head link

sticky sound on 7 stable

On Fri, Jan 11, 2008 at 03:44:36PM +0100, Julian Stacey
wrote:> Hi stable@
> I have sticky sound flow on 2 different slowish laptops running 7
> Stable, Sound plays for a few secs, then breaks for a fraction &
> resumes, repeatedly.  I guess fault is not sound config, hence I'm
> not posting multimedia@, but stable@ where I've seen other Sticky
> 7 response topics.
> Much other info on both laptops & their BSD conf. here:
> 	host=lapd CPU 166M 586 
>   http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/hardware/digital/
> 	host=lapn CPU 133M 586 
>   http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/hardware/laptops/dell_latitude_xpi_p133st/
> Many dmesg & other debug info linked within, anything else you want
> please just tell me debug command to run.  I'm happy to try src/ &
> sys/ patches etc. Pref. based on 7-stable.
> 
> Both have /boot/loader.conf:
> hw.ata.ata_dma="0"              # Essential else disk access
fails.
> 	Could that be it ? 
> 	both report from xs atacontrol mode ad0
> 	current mode = PIO4
This won't help. Mayby there is a BIOS setting that would enable you to
run with dma enabled.

 > I dont know about HZ setting, or different schedulers, but happy
On 7.x, it is recommended to use SCHED_ULE. I'm not sure what compiling
the kernel with HZ=1000 would accomplish, the default is HZ=100. See

Have a look at the sound(4) manual page. There are some sysctls that
influence latency; hw.snd.latency_profile and hw.snd.latency. If the
problem is IRQ processing, you could try setting dev.pcm.0.polling to 1
if the driver supports it. Another thing to check is if the sound card
isn't sharing an interrupt with other devices. The command 'ps -xa |
grep irq' would be of use there.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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freebsd stable - Jan 2008 - sticky sound on 7 stable

sticky sound on 7 stable

sticky sound on 7 stable