Re: [LAD] PCM Troubleshooting Questions

On Sun, October 31, 2010 12:51 pm, Rory Filer wrote:
> Hello,
>
> For most of the last week I've been stuck trying to configure my
> silicon peripheral to generate Normal I2S audio data to mostly _bad_,
> results and had a couple of questions (below).
>
> Briefly, my setup is as follows: SqueezeServer on a Windows host PC,
> Squeezeslave on my embedded Linux device sending audio samples through
> the kernel (2.6.28) down to my driver which lives in
> sound/soc/pxa.I've been trying to configure my device for I2S format.
> Outside the CPU, the I2S-formatted PCM data is sent to an external FM
> transmitter chip so I should be able to hear the audio on my FM
> receiver. Since the only "new" stuff here is my driver and the output
> hardware, I've been focussing my attention on them until now, but
> haven't had much success hearing anything.
>
> I've actually heard _some_ recognizable audio - I could tell it was
> the song I had selected, but it sounded very distorted (sounded
> horrible) and I'm certain it wasn't because of a weak FM transmitter
> signal. I'm guessing it was a mismatch in the formatting of the I2S
> data between what I was sending and what the FM Tx chip was expecting
> and that has formed the basis of my troubleshooting effort. I've run
> out of ideas for things to try at the bottom end and now I want to
> make sure my top-end components are working properly. This is weird
> because I've stopped being able to hear anything lately, but a scope
> confirms my I2S lines are all lit up.
>
> Here are a couple of questions...
>
> 1) The CPU supports a packed mode write to the Synchronous Serial Port
> (SSP) FIFO, meaning that two 16 bit samples (one left channel and one
> right) can be written at the same time, both being packed into a
> single 32 bit FIFO write. My driver enables this mode, but my question
> is, where in the kernel would the samples be combined into a 32 bit
> chunk for writing? I'm using Squeezeslave on my embedded device as the
> player and I've checked the sources and it doesn't look like it's
> happening in there. Makes more sense to be somewhere further down in
> the stack so players don't have to care about the details of the
> hardware they are running on. I was wondering if anyone knew where
> this packing might take place.
>
> 2) Are their any useful tools out there for debugging/narrowing down
> where problems in the audio path might lie? My player is an embedded
> platform and I've only ported Squeezeslave to it, but for all I know
> there could be a problem anywhere from SqueezeServer, through
> Squeezeslave, down into the stack, my PCM driver or even the FM
> transmitter. To eliminate the latter as a problem I'm looking for
> another device that spits out known good I2S audio and I'll feed that
> into the FM Tx and hopefully eliminate that. But there's a lot of code
> from the SSP back and it would be great if I had some simple tone
> generator application (for instance) that was easily portable to an
> ARM9 platform (kernel 2.6.28) that I knew was sending correct data
> down the stack.
>

Did you try aplay ?

> 3) My experience with Linux and audio is just beginning and so far
> it's been right down at the driver level, so a question about audio
> playing software: when a player produces a PCM stream from, say, an
> MP3 file, does it automatically interleave the left channel and right
> channel or does it produce two separate streams, one for left and one
> for right? I can't tell from reading the Squeezeslave code, but it
> looks like the audio data is sent in one continuous stream, so ...
> interleaved?
>

Pretty sure it is. Someone else can confirm though.

> 4) For those of you experienced with I2S and other PCM formats, what
> would a Normal I2S stream sound like on a DAC that thought it was
> receiving Justified I2S? Would the audio still be intelligible or
> would you hear nothing at all?
>
> Thanks to all who read this post.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rory
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>

-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd.
"ZPE is not about creating something from nothing: It is about using the
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such a way that entropy appears to be reversed."
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