Help installing "ASLA audio driver" for my RME Hammerfall DSP card driver on Kubuntu

[GreyGeek]

What I recommended was a "That may or may not fix your problem, but it is an easy try."

However, are you sure it didn't work, or that your problem was real to begin with? Perhaps your sound volume controls were just turned down, or turned off.

To find out open a Konsole and type:
sudo alsamixer
enter your password and then hit the Enter Key.
If your console isn't wide or tall enough drag a corner to make it bigger.
Here's my alsamixer display:

Use F6 to choose the sound card. Hopefully you will see yours listed. If you don't then there is no need continuing. Close the Konsole.

If your card does show then use the up or down arrow to select it and press the Enter key.
If you hit F5 it will re-size the gui to show most controls. Use your left and right arrows to navigate between controls. Up and down arrows to turn slide controls up or down.

If you see <MM> below a control that means that it is not turned on. With it selected press the M key to toggle it on. (M also toggles an on control to the off position.)


When you have the settings the way you want them then hit the ESC key. That takes you back to the Konsole command prompt. Now, enter the following command BEFORE you close the Konsole:
sudo alsactl store
which will save your settings. You can restore them the next time you boot up by entering
sudo alsactl restore in a Konsole. Or, you can put alsactl restore on a line by itself at the botton of the /etc/profile script. Because /etc/profile is owned by root you must edit it as root using the method Snowhog described above.

[MYKubuntu]

Hi @GreyGeek

Big thanks for following up another day. First thing I did following your notes was to go to double check if my RME soundcard is been seen by Kbuntun with Alsa mixer.
So I typed the command: sudo alsamixer

And to my surprise, even if inside Kbuntu I see and have selected my RME hammerfall sound card but in the Alsa Mixer, no RME soundcard is there. Only my Built-in Nvidia sound card (that I disabled from my BIOS)

And I thought that best way to explain is to see what I'm seeing here. So I've attached some pics I took... I think it's gonna help you guys who have been with me since day one here move forward and find the perfect solution in order to have Kbuntu activate my RME soundcard

Let me know what you think
....

Here the link of other pics showing what I'm seeing inside Kbuntu:

https://goo.gl/photos/CfQGFpuX7FR22hcbA

https://goo.gl/photos/hkXzGX54V7RoUDhr9

https://goo.gl/photos/WUh5krGHjtBM52Xu6

[GreyGeek]

Weird looking for sure, but Pulse shows it active and at full volume. Is there a hard or soft switch that turns the sound on or off. On my acer there is a Fn+Key combo that activates or de-activates the sound chip.

[vinnywright]

what dose

pactl list sources

show ,,,,,copyand past into a konsole and hit enter.

in your screenshot (alsamixer) you are displaying the Nvidia HDMI sound card ,,,,,if you look to the far rite of the screen you should see.

F1:  Help               │
F2:  System information │
F6:  Select sound card  │
Esc: Exit               │

pressing F6 should let you select the other one .

in your second link to "other picks" on the "configuration" tab you should be able to select the RME.

however I find pulse audio volume control to be a bit more striate ford in its operation ,,,you can install it with

sudo apt install pavucontrol

it has the same "tabs" as in the system settings multimedia control ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,but lets say you have VLC playing something and your on the application "tab" their will be a dropdown menu to select the card to output to .

VINNY

[MYKubuntu]

Hey guys!

Alright, @Greygeek, I was able now by the command that @vinnywright above

pactl list sources

was able to see the list of

http://imgur.com/a/r1c7W

And I was also able to see RME in the Alsa mixer see in this screenshot below
http://imgur.com/a/bwjC7


Now my concern is that, in my Multimedia setup iunder Audio Hardware setup, thats where things start getting complicated as the setting up in Windows 7 ain't the same in Linux.

Choices I got are:
- Soundcard: I choose RME
- Profile: Multichannel Duplex/Multichannel Output/Input or OFF

After under
- Sound Device: Playback RME or Recording RME
- Connector:

But also in Configure the Audio Volume, i got the following tabs: Output Devices/Inut devices & mostly : Configuration
Under Configuration: I choose: RME /Profile: Multichanel Duplex.. is this correct

Al that to say folks, we now have the Soundcard detected as it look but there's no sound. I tried to play an mp3 and plugged my Headphones in the RME soundcard headphones and nada.

And by the way @GreyGeek, there's no PWR on switch on my soundcard.

Now I belive the challenge is to get SOUND out of this card... the crazy part, when I load in Win7, the soundcard works perfectly

Thanks a bunch again and crossing fingers that will figure this out soon

Best,

[GreyGeek]

It's not crazy that Win10 works with your card. While peripheral devices pay Microsoft to get data from them that will allow them to configure their devices to work with Windows, they do not give Linux developers that same info because it is "proprietary". Ergo, Linux developers have to "green room" driver development, and that can take a long time. The more people that use a particular device the more people that will work on creating a driver. A "green room" is a development process that has to be undertaken to avoid being sued for IP theft by the peripheral device makers. It's all part of Microsoft's extortion racket which was throughly revealed in the Microsoft vs Combs trial.

Not knowing your card or its behaviors my only suggestion is to put on your scientist lab coat and experiment with various settings to find some that work. Sorry.

[MYKubuntu]

Hi GreyGeek

I totally hear you and you're absolutely right on this matter.

Guess what... after I've posted my earlier post.. then I rebooted and Kbuntu ain't seeing my RME anymore. When I open Konsole and type "sudo alsamixer", it shows the RME soundcard but says "this sound device does not have any controls".

Now this is getting funky I must say

Gonna try to reboot and boot back up ;-)

EDIT: Everything is back to normal, I just had to reboot my system under Win7 so Win7 can just FLUSH the ERROR and then now I'm back on Kbuntu and it sees my RME just like what I posted in my earlier post.

But but STILL NO SOUND

I'm wondering now if the Firmware of my RME coming from ALSA site is installed but I don't know how to check that in Kbuntu. And also normally, what I saw in the Alsa link site, you can also install the RME Tools that also give you the Control Panel of the RME soundcaard....

The chase isn't over yet I got a feeling ...

[GreyGeek]

Just for grins, what is the output for
systemctl status sound.target

[MYKubuntu]

Hey guys,

I just did some research and found these infos about my RME Hammerfall and I think that what the guy is saying here about the

"hdsploader"

is what I'm missing. Can anyone read this and write me the steps on how to go about getting the HDSPLoader manually installed?

Integrated, PCI and USB sound cards (Alsa)

If sound and midi work out of the box after a fresh install of Ubuntu, you don't need to read this section. If you have a firewire sound card, please go to the good section.

Specific supported hardware

If you have no sound with Ubuntu, first of all, before doing anything else, check cables and loudspeakers, and audio preferences (select sound card, set output levels, etc...).
Then, you can check if your sound card/chipset is supported at http://alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Main
You may not find your hardware with its product name, nor brand/vendor:

• Most of usb sound card (audio and midi) are supported by the usb-audio driver.
• Some pci sound cards brands/vendors are not listed because they use common audio chipset widely used.

Examples : the Presonus Audiobox USB, the EMU chipsets family.
If your card is said to be supported, you may need some additional alsa packages. Install the Medibuntu repository (see "Unofficial Backports" section).
sudo apt-get install alsa-firmware-loaders alsa-tools alsa-tools-gui alsa-firmwareThis is needed by RME, Echo, etc... professional sound cards. Some cards will need a utility application. Example: for cards like RME hdsp, you may want to run manually the command line "hdsploader" or set it up in the session autostart applications.

Configuration of more than one device

When having more than one soundcard or midi controller, it often appears that one card is one time the default device, other times it's another one. So, to make a long story short, you can ensure that one of your sound-devices is always "0" with this small modification:
Edit the following file with your favourite editor, e.g:
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.confand append this to the bottom of the file, making adjustments as required for your setup, see example below:
options snd_hda-intel index=0
options snd_indigoio index=1
options snd_hdsp index=2
options snd_foo index=3
#etc...Where "foo" is the name of the alsa driver for the soundcard (pci or usb, audio or midi). hda-intel, indigoio and hdsp are given as examples.
To find the name of your sound card driver, go there : http://alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Main
Of course, this will not work for Firewire.

This the link I found the info and might become useful for other some day maybe : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ub...dioPreparation

Thanks again guys the help ;-) I think we're almost there

[MYKubuntu]

Just for grins, what is the output for
systemctl status sound.target

This is what I got when I paste your command on Konsole:

● sound.target - Sound Card
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/sound.target; static; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active since Thu 2016-09-22 21:36:24 EDT; 23min ago
Docs: man:systemd.special(7)

Sep 22 21:36:24 76records systemd[1]: Reached target Sound Card.

That little black circle before "sound.target etc..." is in GREEN color

[GreyGeek]

That green circle means your sound card is active. I found this bit of information:

....
I didn't worry about the asoundrc file or the asound.conf file but the main points about the hdsp system are covered.

However it is not apparently clear from anywhere that you need the firmware known as hdsploader, the configuration program hdspconf and the mixer called hdspmixer to get the multiface to function correctly. On top of that you need the hdsp module or compiled into your kernel, this is known as snd-hdsp

Hdsploader is in the alsa-firmware set of packages/programs/equivilent debian/ubuntu deb files. Hdspconf and hdspmixer, I think are in alsa-tools (possibly in alsa-utils, just get them both). Before you try and download the programs go through the steps below to see if they are already in your system. As you are using a multimedia-centric distro like Ubuntu Studio I expect the module to be loaded but perhaps you need to get the rest of the packages.

You may need to get them through synaptic if they aren't loaded already. I don't actually know how the actual packages are configured because I use gentoo and it works very differently to Ubuntu.

To see if the module snd-hdsp is loaded in your kernel; use the command lsmod to look for the it. If it is not there run sudo modprobe snd-hdsp to see if it is available but not loaded. If it is there, in a terminal try running hdsploader as a normal user. If all your lights flash and then disappear, then the firmware has been uploaded and all is working well. If the output of the terminal says there is no such program you will have to get alsa-tools or something similar. If it worked then as a user run hdspmixer.

Something very necessary to realise is that the inputs and outputs are muted if hdspmixer has not been run. Hdspmixer is a clone of Totalmix and although the shortcuts/quick keys are different it is essentially the same, so read that part in the manual (totalmix for windows) to figure out how to use it.

You can run
lsmod | grep hdsp
to see if you already have the kernel module for your driver loaded. The "hdsploader" is in the package: alsa-firmware-loaders
which contains:

A collection of software loaders for specific hardware:

cspctl - Sound Blaster 16 ASP/CSP control program
hdsploader - firmware loader for the RME Hammerfall DSP cards
mixartloader - firmware loader for Digigram's miXart board sound drivers
pcxhrloader - firmware loader for Digigram pcxhr compatible soundcards
sscape_ctl - SoundScape control utility and firmware loader
usx2yloader - firmware loader for Tascam USX2Y USB soundcards
vxloader - firmware loader for Digigram VX soundcards

Use sudo apt install alsa-firmware-loaders alsa-tools-gui to install it.
The second package, alsa-tools-gui, contains the following:

A collection of GUI based ALSA utilities for specific sound hardware:

echomixer - control tool for Echoaudio soundcards
envy24control - control tool for Envy24 (ice1712) based soundcards
hdajackretask - retask jacks on HDA Intel hardware
hdspconf - GUI program to control the Hammerfall HDSP Alsa Settings.
hdspmixer - tool to control the advanced routing features of the
RME Hammerfall DSP.
rmedigicontrol - control tool for RME Digi32 and RME Digi96 soundcards

With that I hope you will be home free, able to use alsa-tools-gui to control your sound card!

[MYKubuntu]

By the way, just by curiosity, I'm pretty sure you guys who are helping me here have seen this Asla link but in case

http://alsa-project.org/main/index.p...ix:Module-hdsp

Is there a way someone could compile the package here for me with the right command to follow and install as mentioned in this link Or we've already done this?

Just curious

[MYKubuntu]

Hi GreyGeek,

Man you're amazing, thanks for holding on and helping... this is the screenshot of your

lsmod | grep hdsp

to see if the kernel module for my driver loaded.

http://imgur.com/a/7D3Ki

Let me know if this looks good... gonna continue your reading and following your last post....

[GreyGeek]

Hi GreyGeek,

Man you're amazing, thanks for holding on and helping... this is the screenshot of your to see if the kernel module for my driver loaded.

http://imgur.com/a/7D3Ki

Let me know if this looks good... gonna continue your reading and following your last post....

That link shows me nothing but a blank screen with links going to the next post or a signup dialog.

[MYKubuntu]

Goood day GreGeek,

Sorry about that link. I got some very very good news...

Yesterday I followed your last threads and I finally GOT SOUND coming out of my Sound card. I went on and in a terminal try running hdsploaderand that was it, right away the HDSP mixer showed up and everything is there. There's SOUND thank you GUYS for all

Now the issue i'm having, is that there's Audio Crackles & pops when playing back audio. And I did some research and stumbled into this guy link, who seems to have experiment all the ins-and outs about RME sound card with Linux. And he's talking about updating a Kernel.He's saying that this is what will might fix these audio cracks & pops.
Link: http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/7024/print

Would you care checking the link out and help me out because we're not far from having everything solve.

What I noticed also, is that when I'm playing Video on Youtube, the Clock Mode keeps on changing up to 48Khz instead of staying at 44.1 as it supposed to be.

And one last thing I noticed, when I reboot Kbuntu and logged back in, when I play an mp3, nothing plays until I launch again the HDSPMIXER. It's like Kbuntu doesn't save the actual Audio settings. Would love to fix this as well.

But again, when I heard sound yesterday I was in heaven to start off ;-)

Thanks guys for this achievement so far....