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

[GreyGeek]

The key part of your link states:

The most common Linux sound complaint is, “I'm getting clicks and dropouts in my sound!” This could be caused by a number of factors, such as PCI bus bandwidth, nonconforming PCI cards, too-small block sizes or latency. If possible, install the low-latency kernel patches or the 2.6 kernel if it's available by the time this article is published, and make sure your audio program is set to use real-time scheduling. You also can try increasing the block size your program uses. For hardware difficulties various PCI cards, such as some 3Com network cards and RAID controllers, have been known not to follow the PCI bus specification and use more bandwidth then they should, starving the HDSP of bandwidth. You also might need to change the PCI latency timer settings; for information on this see www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-hw2.html. Some motherboards also are known to have poorly performing PCI buses. RME's Web site is quite informative when it comes to hardware incompatibility. I recommend looking at the support section, both after and before buying a Hammerfall.

I'm not an audio technician and all I could do at this point is experiment with various things. One is to check the parms of the kernel module, snd-hdsp:

les/4.4.0-39-generic/kernel/sound/pci/rme9652/snd-hdsp.ko
firmware:       digiface_firmware_rev11.bin
firmware:       digiface_firmware.bin
firmware:       multiface_firmware_rev11.bin
firmware:       multiface_firmware.bin
firmware:       rpm_firmware.bin
license:        GPL
description:    RME Hammerfall DSP
author:         Paul Davis <paul@linuxaudiosystems.com>, Marcus Andersson, Thomas Charbonnel <thomas@undata.org>
srcversion:     75B585DF8AF0522F977376C
alias:          pci:v000010EEd00003FC5sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
depends:        snd-pcm,snd,snd-rawmidi,snd-hwdep
intree:         Y
vermagic:       4.4.0-39-generic SMP mod_unload modversions 
parm:           index:Index value for RME Hammerfall DSP interface. (array of int)
parm:           id:ID string for RME Hammerfall DSP interface. (array of charp)
parm:           enable:Enable/disable specific Hammerfall DSP soundcards. (array of bool)

In this case there are only three "parm" to adjust, but only the first two might be of help.
You can test by first removing snd-hdsp
sudo modprobe -r snd-hdsp
then adding it again with parameters
sudo modprobe snd-hdsp index=? id=?

I have no clue what would replace the "?" marks. Sorry.

[Snowhog]

The following is for our esteemed GreyGeek, as I think he will understand the contents better than the OP (or myself), and, it might be helpful here.

installing and using a rme hammerfall dsp with linux - pd klingt org

[MYKubuntu]

The following is for our esteemed GreyGeek, as I think he will understand the contents better than the OP (or myself), and, it might be helpful here.

installing and using a rme hammerfall dsp with linux - pd klingt org

YOu're more than right that what's in this link only someone advanced like GreyGeek can understand the whole "chinese" language in this ;-) Crossfinger

Thanks @Snowhog for finding this. Gives me hope

[GreyGeek]

YOu're more than right that what's in this link only someone advanced like GreyGeek can understand the whole "chinese" language in this ;-) Crossfinger

Thanks @Snowhog for finding this. Gives me hope

That article was 13 years old and a lot of the links were broken or outdated. To solve crackle problem there was this:

pci/cardbus issues
if you experience dropouts / xruns / clicks / pops with your hdsp, try to change the pci-latency values of your pci devices:
in my case i lowered the pci latency of the built-in nvidia graphics card:
do a "lspci" and get a result like: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82815 815 Chipset Host Bridge and Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82815 815 Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BAM/CAM PCI Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BAM ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801BAM IDE U100 (rev 02)
00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #1) (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 Go] (rev b2)
02:03.0 Multimedia audio controller: ESS Technology ES1983S Maestro-3i PCI Audio Accelerator (rev 10)
02:06.0 PCI bridge: Action Tec Electronics Inc: Unknown device 0100 (rev 11)
02:0f.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4451 PC card Cardbus Controller
02:0f.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4451 PC card Cardbus Controller
02:0f.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCI4451 IEEE-1394 Controller
08:04.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 08)
08:08.0 Communication controller: Lucent Microelectronics WinModem 56k (rev 01)
09:00.0 Multimedia audio controller: Xilinx, Inc.: Unknown device 3fc5 (rev 0a)

this gives you the pc bus+devicenumber of your cards
now try different values for pci-latency (as root):
"setpci -v -s 01:00.0 latency_timer=04" did it in my case
the command sets the pci-latency of my nvidia-card to 4 (instead of 248) and greatly improves the performance of other cards on the bus.
there's a good howto about this topic here
and a GUI tool called gpowertweak that helps you getting an overview.

This tip suggests that the pops, crackles and other noise is due to PCI latency interference. Could be. Out of all the PCI devices lists the author of the tip chooses the NVIDIA card and uses setcpi, which IS installed on 16.04 by default (at least it is on my system). If you have an NVIDIA GPU putzing with the "latency_timer" value might reduce the noise. Increase? Decrease? He decreased it from 248 to 4. What about the other PCI devices.
You can check the latency of your PCI devices in KInfoCenter, under the System menu. Mine shows this:


My Intel Integrated Graphic chip shows 0 latency (20 microseconds and 40 microseconds). Our machines are much faster and a lot different from those of four computer generations ago. I don't know if changing the MIN_GNT or MAX_INT would help anything (IF my laptop were giving trouble). All one can do is experiment and see.

[MYKubuntu]

Hi @GreyGeek

Thanks for looking into the link shared by @Snowhog. You're simply amazing going thru dissecting all these codes. Simply woooow. By the way I don't my PCi soundcard has any latency problem. I'll double check this out tomorrow

I think I've figured to make the RME working now by of course going back reading all the steps you've shared here and see if I haven't missed anything on how to SETUP Alsamixer etc... I'll share tomorrow how things are working here.

But I've been also doing some research and from what I've read, if I want to use this Kbuntu system to make music, I will need to install JACK system: http://jackaudio.org/downloads/

And was wondering if you could take a look in helping me the best way and easy step by step to install JACK in my system

This is interesting to read the use of Pusleaudio versus Jack: http://jackaudio.org/faq/pulseaudio_and_jack.html

Thanks a bunch again for the amazing help... the quest keep going hahahha

[GreyGeek]

... By the way I don't [think] my PCi soundcard has any latency problem. I'll double check this out tomorrow....

According to the article Snowhog linked to, it was the NVIDIA GPU latency problem that was affecting the sound, which was probably discovered by the article submitter after a round of experimentation. Curing the latency problem of the NVIDIA card solved the crackle and pop of the sound card. Of course, it could be any PCI device that has latency problems that step on your sound card.

And was wondering if you could take a look in helping me the best way and easy step by step to install JACK in my system

....

I don't know jack about JACK ...

[MYKubuntu]

Hey guys!

Hello @GreyGeek @SnowHog and all, sorry been caught up with time at work and all. Back here in the findings to solve the "crackling" issue that i'm experimenting with my soundcard. Sound card does work but every time I start an audio playback, there's always that little audio crackle or glitches and then a few second after, it goes away and all works just fine.

@GreyGeek, i'm gonna read again the article of the guy mentioning bout the Nvidia PCI might create this issue. But in all honestly I doubt it my be my Nvidia soundcard because WHY is that in Windows 7 boot (that is my main Audio production workstation) I don't have none of these audio crackles but when I switch to Kbuntu (Linux) problem exist This where I'm curious as well to find out.

About JACK hahahhaaha I love your last sentence @GreyGeek Epic hahhahaha

I've installed JACK & i'll get back to you guys about how it behaves. It seems to work, I can launch JACK but I get a message that JACK ain't able to connect to SERVER. I'll double check the exact message I get and will post it back here.

Again sorry guys I went MIA but i'm back. Hope everybody's doing great ;-)

[GreyGeek]

Maybe you can tell me a little bit about JACK when you are done

[vinnywright]

you may want to look at this thread ,,, since you actually work in audio .

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthread.php?25772-kubuntu-studio

and


http://ubuntustudio.org/tour/audio/


VINNY

[MYKubuntu]

you may want to look at this thread ,,, since you actually work in audio .

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthread.php?25772-kubuntu-studio

and


http://ubuntustudio.org/tour/audio/


VINNY

Hi Vinny, Man I'll for sure going to read this article and give this a try especially where the guy is giving a SUDO command that seems to intall Ubuntu studio over and all just gets installed and working. I'll give it a try and will report back to you guys

@GreyGeek, to be honest, I don't now Jack about JACK neither hahaha so i'll find out hahahhaha

[GreyGeek]

Interesting VINNY!
I read that JACK allows inputting and outputting sound signals from a variety of sources and sinks, and even bringing the output of a second or third layer back into the first layer..

Twelve years ago I had a Gateway m675 laptop with an 18" display. It also had the standard mic input and speaker jack output. In addition it also had a "JACK" (input?output?), a"Mic2" input, a "Line 1" input and a "Line 2" input, along with, IIRC, a "Mixer" socket (input? Output?). I never knew what to do with them and was happy and satisfied to get a gorgeous sound out of it while running Linux.

I checked the repository and noticed several packages, in addition to "jack", that were "jack" related. For a standard laptop like the one I am currently running,, with only a stereo sound output jack and a stereo sound input mic, of what value would the JACK software be?

[Snowhog]

Really 'dated', and likely you are aware of it, but....

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/What%20is%20JACK

[MYKubuntu]

By the way guys, was wondering... the command line the guy gave in the link shared by @Vinny, is this one long line command??

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-audio ubuntustudio-audio-plugins ubuntustudio-graphics ubuntustudio-video


Or I have to first start with : sudo apt-get update and then once this is done, type the whole following:

sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-audio ubuntustudio-audio-plugins ubuntustudio-graphics ubuntustudio-video

Curious

[Snowhog]

You can copy the entire line and paste it into a konsole.

[MYKubuntu]

Thanks @Snowhog for the quick reply

Alright, now guess what? I haven't start my computer with Kbuntu since last time I was here and I was absent here from almost a week or so.. and now I reboot my Dual boot computer and normally if I don't touch anything, it starts Kbuntu, and thats what the computer is doing.. but now iit stays on the Kubuntu Logo at the beginning and it does NOT move forward.... I can't log in Kbuntu.. Well it does NOT bring me to the login page.. it stays in the Kbuntu Logo

Any idea