Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 01:18:25 -0500 From: Josh Tolbert <hemi@just.puresimplicity.net> To: freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Unusual sound problems Message-ID: <20030619061825.GA39118@just.puresimplicity.net>
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Hello freebsd-alpha@, I'm having an unusual and annoying problem with my Alpha. The machine is a PC164LX, 533MHz 21164A, 1G RAM (4x Crucial CT32M72S4D7E), 3DFx VoodooIII/2000 in the 64-bit PCI slot farthest from the CPU, an Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller in the other 64-bit slot, an Intel Pro/100+ NIC in the 32-bit PCI slot next to the 2940UW and nothing in the topmost PCI slot. Sound comes from an SB Vibra16 in the ISA slot closest to the PCI slots. I think my problem involves the sound card. The OS is 5.1-RELEASE, recompiled with fairly standard /etc/make.conf contents: CPUTYPE?=ev56 CFLAGS= -O -pipe COPTFLAGS= -O -pipe CXXFLAGS+= -fmemoize-lookups -fsave-memoized The kernel was recompiled with unnecessary hardware commented out and the "cpu EV4" line commented out. pcm and sbc devices were compiled in for sound support. Some of you may remember my previous e-mails about my Alpha and sound. The general concensus (and personal experience from many hours of testing different sound cards in my machine) was that an ISA sound card would be the only sound card that would work properly in my Alpha. I'm beginning to think that even ISA sound cards are a shaky proposition. I got sound working but never really tried anything really sound-intensive. Well, the other night I got bored and decided to see if I could get an mp3 player working. After much cursing, I finally got multimedia/xmms to build (I had to remove the -ffast-math CFLAG from the source's top-level configure file to get xmms to build), install and run. After xmms was working I tried to play some mp3s. The few seconds I listened to one sounded just fine. I then mounted an nfs export of the directory I keep a bunch of mp3s in on the alpha and began playing mp3s from the NFS mount. The sound stuttered quite badly. I originally had a DEC 21140 (true Tulip) NIC in the machine. I swapped the NIC out for the Pro/100+ and that fixed most of the stuttering, but some of the stuttering still remains. To eliminate the network as a possible problem I copied some mp3s to the local drive and played them with xmms. The stuttering continued. I tried another player (mp3blaster) but the stuttering remains. I increased the buffer size to as large as it would go in xmms, to no avail. I re-niced the xmms process to -20 and the stuttering continued. The stuttering is especially intense during high network load (moving files around with scp and the like). I began looking at top and other things to find some indication of where the problem lies. Top only reported about 17% of the CPU in use. I could get playback to stutter without fail every time I ran vmstat. Any ideas? The machine seems to run fine otherwise (besides missing things like a web browser that really *works*, etc.) It sounds strange, but I really would like sound to work without stuttering on my Alpha. I'm not really worried about the nfs mount right now; I'll just be happy to get playback from the local disks to work without stuttering. I am inclined to think that the problem lies with the sound driver, but I don't have anything solid to back up my hunch. Is there any more information I can provide? What would be helpful? Thanks, Josh hemi@puresimplicity.net
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