I will try to be much more brief :)
Does anyone know why my external usb sound card - a Novation X-Station -
doesn't work properly? It should be supported, but many things crash when
trying to output to it - and both aRts and PulseAudio refuses to work with
it.
Support for the device in snd-usb-audio is described here:
http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdev.php?id=3114
Please help.
Kristian
2008/4/6, Kristian Dalgard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> Dear List,
> The presence of you gives me new hope in my desperate journey for
> outputting sound through my Novation X-Station in a reasonable manner... a
> manner that is system wide and doesn't cause applications to crash. This
> journey is becoming a long one despite the fact that my device is officially
> supported by the snd-usb-audio driver.
>
> The last four days I have struggled with understanding the many (often
> very confusingly referenced) layers in producing sound on my system. I have
> installed stuff, compiled kernel-stuff and edited numerous config-files. And
> I have grown a lot wiser. But I have also grown more and more convinced that
> something is amiss deep down at the driver level.
>
> I'm running Kubuntu 7.10, ALSA (libasound2) version 1.0.14. I have an
> internal Intel sound card besides my X-Station, which is a USB device. I
> definitely consider myself a newbie in the world of Linux.
>
> For reference, the pages linked to below this paragraph describe the
> driver my card is using and another person's problem which may be the same
> as mine. I have also seen mailing list posts about the successful
> development of support for my device (and the Novation ReMOTE, which should
> be similar).
>
> http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdev.php?id=3114
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-utils/+bug/148815
>
>
> Now, a short recap of my troubles:
>
> Upon a clean install of Kubuntu my "XStation" shows up in KMix very nicely
> alongside my internal devices. It takes me quite a while though to figure
> out how to make it the active device, which I end up doing with "asoundconf
> set-default-card XStation" as the card shows up (again, quite nicely) on
> "asoundconf list" with that name.
> This immediately produces sound when playing a wma-audio (I know, RAS
> syndrome) file in Amarok. When trying to play an mp3, after installing mp3
> support (Xine or something), Amarok crashes.
>
> After a reboot, which I thought would in some way consolidate my new
> choice of default card, the aRts soundserver (artsd) crashes upon logging
> into KDE. (aRts seems like a terrible choice for KDE anyways, doesn't
> it...?) Artsd keeps crashing every few seconds but, as far as I can remember
> now, I am actually able to play some files in Amarok. I quickly do a
> "reset-default-card", though, as being constantly interrupted by a
> crash-infobox is frustrating to say the least.
>
> I try disabling my Intel sound card in BIOS, but it only switches focus in
> my to some kind of tv-card sound device, which doesn't help at all.
>
> Way too many hours of Googl'ing later, I try downgrading ALSA to version
> 1.0.13. This pays off in a way that sort of moves my problems around a
> bit. I am able to play mp3s (with the sound being output through my
> X-Station, of course) but having trouble with other sources and various
> stuff crashes spontaneously... I then try compiling and applying version
> 1.0.16 on my kernel with somewhat the same general results, and lastly I do
> a full reinstall of the beta version of Kubuntu 8.04 Hardy. The last move is
> to make sure everything ALSA is included and tested by others.
>
> During all of my attempts (which include other dead ends advised in
> different places) I have tried editing relevant conf-files including adding
> my device to .asoundrc in the ways described in forum posts and articles and
> setting and resetting asoundconf default-card. But it seems that aRts never
> really works with my device and other applications either crash, produce
> sound for less than a second, do not produce sound at all or ... play just
> fine.
>
> Now I have made a very comprehensive installation of PulseAudio on my
> system. I have followed every step in the official guide, and all in all
> this seems like a very nice setup. The "Volume Control" utility seems to
> work great and my applications produce sound - all on my internal sound
> card. My X-Station on the other hand is not even listed under "sinks" in the
> volume control util.
>
> The absence of the X-Station is not unexpected, though, although it still
> shows up in KMix; when running pulseaudio un-daemonized in console I get a
> lot of errors which I think at least hint of the level of my problem. The
> output is as follows:
>
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ pkill pulseaudio
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ pulseaudio
> W: main.c: WARNING: called SUID root, but not in group 'pulse-rt'.
> E: module-alsa-sink.c: Failed to set hardware parameters: Operation not
> permitted
> E: module.c: Failed to load module "module-alsa-sink" (argument:
> "device=hw:1"): initialization failed.
> E: module-alsa-source.c: Failed to set hardware parameters: Operation not
> permitted
> E: module.c: Failed to load module "module-alsa-source" (argument:
> "device=hw:1"): initialization failed.
> W: alsa-util.c: device doesn't support 44100 Hz, changed to 48000 Hz.
> W: alsa-util.c: Cannot find mixer control "Capture".
> W: alsa-util.c: Cannot find fallback mixer control "Mic".
> W: alsa-util.c: device doesn't support 44100 Hz, changed to 48000 Hz.
> W: alsa-util.c: Cannot find mixer control "Capture".
> W: alsa-util.c: Cannot find fallback mixer control "Mic".
> E: sound-file.c: Failed to open file
> /usr/share/sounds/gtk-events/activate.wav
> E: main.c: Failed to load sound file.
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ aplay -l
> **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
> card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC882 Analog [ALC882 Analog]
> Subdevices: 0/1
> Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
> card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC882 Digital [ALC882 Digital]
> Subdevices: 1/1
> Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
> card 1: XStation [XStation], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
> Subdevices: 1/1
> Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
>
>
> I am not able to say in what way PulseAudio, ALSA, aRts, the ALSA kernel
> drivers and the USB layer is linked together - in fact, I am pretty confused
> about this - but it seems to me, that the trouble begins in trying to
> communicate with the device at driver level. The X-Station does produce
> sound in certain situations, which really adds to my frustration, and
> support for the device has been added/checked with the driver.
>
> Making this work is very important to me and the only real problem I'm
> having with Kubuntu so far. I really hope someone here is able to help. And
> I sincerely apologize for my verbosity, it is getting quite late here in
> Denmark...
>
> Thank you for reading, anyway!
>
> Kristian Dalgård
>
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