Re: [LAD] Two strange problems

On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 2:14 PM, Fons Adriaensen <fons@email-addr-hidden> wrote:

> I'm preparing a seminar that will take place tomorrow (4 May),
> it will involve live mixing of surround sound using Ardour.
> While setting up the PC to be used, two problems occured.
>
> The first one is solved, but its cause remains misterious.
> A some point it appeared that the sound card (HDSP-MADI,
> used every day since years) had decided to meet its creator.
> Every program trying to access it - from jackd to aplay -L
> not only blocked, but turned out to be impossible to kill.
> Replaced the card - same result. It turned out to be a
> corrupt /var/lib/alsa/asound.state. The systemd service
> doing the 'alsactl restore' while booting choked on it,
> blocked, and this apperently blocked all others trying
> to use the card later. What I don't understand is how alsactl
> exactly failed, and why these processes seemed to be immune
> to a 'kill -9'.
>
> The second one is an Ardour2 session that worked perfectly
> on another similar PC, but becomes completely unresponsive
> on the one to be used. It has four mono tracks and three
> 10-channel ones, and little else. DSP load is not the problem,
> it's less than 15%. Things look like it's the graphics. When
> Ardour's playhead reaches the right end of the editor window,
> it takes something like 5 seconds for the editor display to
> update - everything seems to freeze during that time but audio
> is not interrupted. Same when trying to scroll or change the
> zoom factor. Video card is Nvidia GeForce 7300, indeed quite
> old, but the same PC does full-screen HD youtube videos without
> problem. Video driver is nouveau as nv seems to be no longer
> supported by Archlinux. I'm pretty sure this system didn't have
> such problems when it was using nv. OTOH nouveau works very well
> on other systems... I could try and install the proprietary
> Nvidia driver, but with just some hours to go I'd rather not
> take any risks...
>
> Any hints ?
>
> Ciao,
>
>
>
Fons, sorry if this reply didn't come in time, but FWIW, Non-Timeline can
now import Ardour sessions (audio tracks and regions) and should have
significantly faster graphics, esp. on older hardware.

_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-dev mailing list
Linux-audio-dev@email-addr-hidden
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Received on Sun May 5 20:15:01 2013