Re: [LAU] [Alsa-user] ALSA(?) stops playback (seamingly) randomly

From: Jonathan E. Brickman <jeb@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Sun Dec 13 2009 - 22:45:02 EET

Sounds like an ALSA-mixer plugin problem to me.  The theory goes that when multiple attempts to output sound to an ALSA sound card are made at the same time, ALSA is supposed to recognize whether or not the sound card can mix the streams in hardware, and if not, ALSA is supposed to introduce its own software stream mixer automatically.  But I have multiple reports that it often just doesn't happen.  And because audio applications don't always terminate their output cleanly, multiple sequential attempts at playing a track can be interpreted as being quasi-simultaneous; and if the mixing ability doesn't work, you get what you're seeing, something crashes in ALSA and sound dies on the box.

I fixed the below symptoms on two boxes of mine, using alphanumeric sound card names plus using PulseAudio to handle the multistream issue, as an entryway to ALSA.  I have Jack involved too, which means I am using App-->ALSA-->Jack-->ALSA for all non-live-music sound (see here).  If you don't need Jack, I suspect that if you convert any vanilla distro which uses Pulse by default to use alphanumeric names, and then make sure that all of your audio apps go to Pulse (except Audacious, that's still a problem apparently) using an .asoundrc (see attached), you should be fine.  Otherwise, I would use the AAJA method linked above.

J.E.B.

Hello everyone,

I'm using Debian Lenny and since I exchanged my mainboard and relating 
components some time ago I encounter the following problem:

When I listening to some music (using Amarok-1.4.10 or herrie) playback stops 
somewhere at a radnom time, when maybe 3-5 (differs randomly) tracks have 
been played. herrie can't be terminated in regular way after a playback-stop, 
using Amarok I can simply restart playback and everything is alright.

I think this is a problem concerning ALSA, because if it happens using herrie, 
everything will be alright after running 'alsaconf'.

Does anyone have a hunch, whtat's wrong here and how to fix it?

Thank you. Regards
->Lukas


Some information:
'lsmod | grep snd' gives:
snd_intel8x0           26268  3
snd_ac97_codec         88452  1 snd_intel8x0
ac97_bus                1728  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm_oss            32800  0
snd_mixer_oss          12320  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                62660  4 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_dummy           2660  0
snd_seq_oss            24992  0
snd_seq_midi            5728  0
snd_rawmidi            18496  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_midi_event      6432  2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq                41456  6 
snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_timer              17800  3 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device          6380  5 
snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
snd                    45636  14 
snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
soundcore               6368  1 snd
snd_page_alloc          7816  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm


'cat /proc/asound/cards':
 0 [ICH5           ]: ICH4 - Intel ICH5
                      Intel ICH5 with ALC850 at irq 17


'cat /proc/asound/version':
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.16.

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Received on Mon Dec 14 00:15:01 2009