5.1 on SB Live! 5.1 [SB0060] is very unreliable

[Michael B. Trausch]

Binary package hint: pulseaudio

I don't know if this is actually a PulseAudio bug or a bug in some lower-level like ALSA; it seems like it's PulseAudio only because sometimes restarting it makes it work for longer or restore sound at all (more below).

I have a SB Live! 5.1 (see /proc/asound/cards just below this ¶), which works mostly okay in Jaunty but now is exceedingly unreliable in Karmic. In Jaunty, I just told PulseAudio that it had 6 channels to output and set the mixer controls on the ALSA mixer so that I had sound coming out of all the speakers in a configuration that I liked.

 0 [Live ]: EMU10K1 - SB Live! 5.1 [SB0060]
                      SB Live! 5.1 [SB0060] (rev.7, serial:0x80611102) at 0xdc00, irq 19

I was very happy to see the ability to just select "Output Analog Surround 5.1" as an option. This is what I did in my (fresh) Karmic install (the full profile name is "Output Analog Surround 5.1 + Input Analog Stereo"). Now, this unreliability manifests in different, multiple ways. I don't know if this should be broke out into separate bugs, but if so, please feel free to do so:

 * If the profile is switched while sound is playing, sound may stop playing at all until PulseAudio is restarted (I did this by running "pulseaudio -k" at the terminal; PA started right back up on its own after I did that).
 * 5.1 only actually works when the profile is switched while sound is playing, until the next skip in sound (this is independent of the program sending audio; verified with Banshee and mpg321). This is easily reproduceable with the new control panel widget and mpg321: Start to play a song, switch the profile to 5.1. It sounds great. Send SIGINT (Ctrl+C) to mpg321, and start to play the same song with it again. It seems to revert back to regular stereo, after a few messages about ALSA underruns. Sometimes, you can get the ALSA underrun message _while_ mpg321 is playing, after setting to 5.1: once it hits those underruns, you're back to stereo.

While it reverts back to stereo in reality, the sound preferences panel will still say that it's outputting 5.1 surround sound audio. To bring 5.1 back, one much switch to a different profile and back to 5.1 while the sound is still playing.

There are no messages in the kernel ring buffer which indicate any audio issues at the driver level; the only visible diagnostic is getting this message while playing mpg321 music (and once the first one is emitted, it's back to stereo):

mbt@zest:~/Music/M$ mpg123 MIA\ -\ Paper\ Planes.mp3
High Performance MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 Audio Player for Layer 1, 2, and 3.
Version 0.59q (2002/03/23). Written and copyrights by Joe Drew.
Uses code from various people. See 'README' for more!
THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Title : Paper Planes Artist: M.I.A.
Album : Paper Planes - Homeland Securi Year : 2008
Comment: XL Genre :

Playing MPEG stream from MIA - Paper Planes.mp3 ...
MPEG 1.0 layer III, 320 kbit/s, 44100 Hz joint-stereo
ALSA: underrun, at least 0ms.
ALSA: underrun, at least 0ms.

Every time an underrun occurs, the song skips by some small amount of time. If you see 30 or so of those messages, a good chunk (maybe 10-20 seconds?) is skipped in the song. In short, when the sound works properly, it's *really* good. After a skip, it's *really* bad.

Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: mbt 4117 F.... pulseaudio
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Live'/'SB Live! 5.1 [SB0060] (rev.7, serial:0x80611102) at 0xdc00, irq 19'
   Mixer name : 'SigmaTel STAC9708,11'
   Components : 'AC97a:83847608'
   Controls : 224
   Simple ctrls : 45
CurrentDmesg:

DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: pulseaudio 1:0.9.16~test7-14-g7ca81-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-9.29-generic
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-9-generic x86_64
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

Just after I hit submit, someone said my name on IRC and so a ding came in. I instantly received *much* skipping from mpg123 and the rest of my song was skipped—and 5.1 audio reverted back to stereo again.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please open a terminal and execute: apport-collect 406582 ? It will attach the necessary information to this report. Thanks in advance.

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: mbt 4117 F.... pulseaudio
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Live'/'SB Live! 5.1 [SB0060] (rev.7, serial:0x80611102) at 0xdc00, irq 19'
   Mixer name : 'SigmaTel STAC9708,11'
   Components : 'AC97a:83847608'
   Controls : 224
   Simple ctrls : 45
CurrentDmesg:

DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: pulseaudio 1:0.9.16~test7-14-g7ca81-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-9.29-generic
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-9-generic x86_64
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

At this point, my sound is frequently totally broken. I just found PulseAudio spinning my CPU like crazy:

mbt@zest:~/tmp/gnumeric-1.9.9/src$ ps -eaf|grep pulseaudio
mbt 4564 1 57 Sep11 ? 1-13:21:20 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog
mbt 4568 4564 0 Sep11 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/pulseaudio/pulse/gconf-helper

I attempted to "pulseaudio -k", which had no effect. Sending signal 15 had no effect. Sending signal 9 killed it finally, but when it came back up, it's only option for "output" is a null audio device.

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

As an aside, when Pulse is spinning the CPU, any time a Flash-using site is loaded in Firefox, the whole browser dies. This makes sites like YouTube and Hulu totally unusable, and it makes it impossible to use audio notifications from applications like Pidgin. Is there a way to get rid of this from the system? It seems if I attempt to remove it, I'll also lose the ubuntu-desktop package.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 7:58 AM, Michael B. Trausch <email address hidden> wrote:
> had no effect.  Sending signal 9 killed it finally, but when it came
> back up, it's only option for "output" is a null audio device.

Please keep in mind that the reason for a null/dummy device is that
some other process(es) is(are) holding /dev/dsp* or /dev/snd/pcm*, so
try using "sudo fuser -v /dev/dsp* /dev/snd/*" to see what app(s)
is(are) the culprit(s).

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

On Mon, 2009-09-14 at 12:40 +0000, Daniel T Chen wrote:
> Please keep in mind that the reason for a null/dummy device is that
> some other process(es) is(are) holding /dev/dsp* or /dev/snd/pcm*, so
> try using "sudo fuser -v /dev/dsp* /dev/snd/*" to see what app(s)
> is(are) the culprit(s).

I already rebooted to get sound working again, but I'm quite confident
that PA will wind up shooting itself again sometime today, so I'll check
that when it happens.

I wouldn't think that anything would have the chance to open the sound
device, though, since PA starts up immediately again after being kill
-9'd. Certainly none of the applications on my desktop were actually
emitting sound, of those that are capable of doing so, until I rebooted.

 --- Mike

--
Blog: http://mike.trausch.us/blog/
Misc. Software: http://mike.trausch.us/software/

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Are you using the 32-bit or 64-bit Adobe Flash plugin, e.g., adobe-flashplugin from the Canonical partner repository or flashplugin-installer from Ubuntu multiverse? See bug 408615

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

64-bit from upstream, version 10.0r22. I stopped using the 32-bit plugin a long time ago due to reliability issues. The 64-bit one is also unreliable (and inefficient) but it does not have all the problems that the 32-bit one did. It works half of the time instead of almost never.

If my problems were only with Flash, I'd probably just avoid using it at all. As it is, I rarely use it; I have enough problems without it.

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

(I would just be happy to be able to use a music player—any music player—and get system sounds all at the same time without odd issues. Seems that if no sound is played for a while, volume settings revert to some strange set of defaults that introduce clipping, for example, if I get sound at all. Sometimes it skips, chunks, or sounds like static. Other times, sounds are played as out of order samples. It's just frustrating all the way around.)

[Thomas (thomasgubler)]

I have the same problem with a "Turtle Beach Riviera PCI" Sound Card. But I'm only experiencing the problem which is described in the original bug report (profile switching, correct 5.1 only until the next skip in sound). I have no problems with flash etc.

I assume this bug is not restricted to SB Live Cards. Do you wish me to open a new bug report?

[Thomas (thomasgubler)]

AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.21.
Architecture: i386
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC1: thomasgubler 1479 F.... pulseaudio
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'HDMI'/'HDA ATI HDMI at 0xcfeec000 irq 17'
   Mixer name : 'ATI R6xx HDMI'
   Components : 'HDA:1002aa01,00aa0100,00100000'
   Controls : 4
   Simple ctrls : 1
Card0.Amixer.values:
 Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0
   Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined penum
   Playback channels: Mono
   Mono: Playback [off]
Card1.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:1 'CMI8738'/'C-Media CMI8738 (model 55) at 0xe000, irq 19'
   Mixer name : 'CMedia PCI'
   Components : ''
   Controls : 41
   Simple ctrls : 22
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Package: pulseaudio 1:0.9.22~0.9.21+stable-queue-32-g8478-0ubuntu14
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_GB.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-22.33-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Tags: lucid
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-22-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare
dmi.bios.date: 04/02/01
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: Version 07.00T
dmi.board.name: MS-6702
dmi.board.vendor: MSI
dmi.board.version: 1.0
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: 0123ABC
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: Uknown Chassis Manufacture
dmi.chassis.version: Version 1.00
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvrVersion07.00T:bd04/02/01:svnMSI:pnMS-6702:pvr1.0:rvnMSI:rnMS-6702:rvr1.0:cvnUknownChassisManufacture:ct3:cvrVersion1.00:
dmi.product.name: MS-6702
dmi.product.version: 1.0
dmi.sys.vendor: MSI
mtime.conffile..etc.pulse.daemon.conf: 2010-05-30T16:49:50.655198

[Thomas (thomasgubler)]

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[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

I finally have my desktop and speakers back out of storage… and this bug still exists. I was hoping to be able to listen to my Lambert album without having to have Sound Preferences open, but every time a new song plays, I have to flip the profile from 5.1 to 4.1 and then back to 5.1 so that the songs play correctly, otherwise, I only get 2 (tinny) channels of output!

This is with a fully up-to-date Lucid, playing music in Totem. Seems that it closes and reopens the device between every song, but that *really* shouldn't matter. PA should remember that it's in the 5.1 profile and output all six channels all the time.

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

Also, if I turn the volume down using the PA volume control on the panel, the sound becomes very tinny. I must leave it at "Unamplified" (which is most certainly amplified) and am required to adjust volume on the speakers themselves, which is terribly inconvenient.

This problem bugs me enough that I am absolutely willing to fix it—but someone has to teach me how. I know NOTHING about audio from the point of view of software, and really all I know is that this issue has something to do with PA. Working around the issue by uninstalling PA is getting more difficult with each passing release of Ubuntu, and honestly doesn't provide a long-term fix for the issue.

For that matter, if there is anyone who is local to me and would be willing to try to figure this out "hand-on", I am *absolutely* willing to invite someone by and offer coffee, pizza, beer, whatever, for the help. Maybe I'm being overly annoyed by this problem but I seriously need it fixed. I don't have that much in the way of money to offer someone, sadly.

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

Today, I am back to having dummy output listed as the only sound card choice for PA. Nothing has the sound card open:

mbt@zest:~$ sudo fuser -v /dev/dsp* /dev/snd/*
mbt@zest:~$

If I kill pulseaudio and check again, still nothing is using the sound card:

mbt@zest:~$ pulseaudio -k
mbt@zest:~$ sudo fuser -v /dev/dsp* /dev/snd/*
mbt@zest:~$

So I am not sure what to do. Rebooting a couple of times has not fixed it in this instance. To my knowledge, nothing has changed since last night when the system was working and I shut it down cleanly before going to bed.

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

This problem still exists in the latest updated version of Maverick.

[Thomas (thomasgubler)]

I noticed that in Rhythmbox the problem is different. In Rhythmbox I have to reset the sound preferences only once when I start listening to a playlist/album/... (switch to anything and then switch back to Analog Surround 5.1 Output). In Banshee (and any other player I tried so far) I have to to this between every track.

[Raymond (superquad-vortex2)]

did your PA server log contain the error message when select 5.1 profile as in Bug #455779

I: alsa-sink.c: Starting playback.
I: (alsa-lib)pcm_hw.c: SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

An update: I have changed sound cards. The problems with Pulse remain; these
problems are not specific to the SB 5.1.

--
Sent from my Android-powered G2.
On Nov 7, 2010 8:35 PM, "Raymond" <email address hidden> wrote:
> did your PA server log contain the error message when select 5.1 profile
> as in Bug #455779
>
> I: alsa-sink.c: Starting playback.
> I: (alsa-lib)pcm_hw.c: SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed
>
> --
> 5.1 on SB Live! 5.1 [SB0060] is very unreliable
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/406582
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “pulseaudio” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: pulseaudio
>
> I don't know if this is actually a PulseAudio bug or a bug in some
lower-level like ALSA; it seems like it's PulseAudio only because sometimes
restarting it makes it work for longer or restore sound at all (more below).
>
> I have a SB Live! 5.1 (see /proc/asound/cards just below this ¶), which
works mostly okay in Jaunty but now is exceedingly unreliable in Karmic. In
Jaunty, I just told PulseAudio that it had 6 channels to output and set the
mixer controls on the ALSA mixer so that I had sound coming out of all the
speakers in a configuration that I liked.
>
> 0 [Live ]: EMU10K1 - SB Live! 5.1 [SB0060]
> SB Live! 5.1 [SB0060] (rev.7, serial:0x80611102) at 0xdc00, irq 19
>
> I was very happy to see the ability to just select "Output Analog Surround
5.1" as an option. This is what I did in my (fresh) Karmic install (the full
profile name is "Output Analog Surround 5.1 + Input Analog Stereo"). Now,
this unreliability manifests in different, multiple ways. I don't know if
this should be broke out into separate bugs, but if so, please feel free to
do so:
>
> * If the profile is switched while sound is playing, sound may stop
playing at all until PulseAudio is restarted (I did this by running
"pulseaudio -k" at the terminal; PA started right back up on its own after I
did that).
> * 5.1 only actually works when the profile is switched while sound is
playing, until the next skip in sound (this is independent of the program
sending audio; verified with Banshee and mpg321). This is easily
reproduceable with the new control panel widget and mpg321: Start to play a
song, switch the profile to 5.1. It sounds great. Send SIGINT (Ctrl+C) to
mpg321, and start to play the same song with it again. It seems to revert
back to regular stereo, after a few messages about ALSA underruns.
Sometimes, you can get the ALSA underrun message _while_ mpg321 is playing,
after setting to 5.1: once it hits those underruns, you're back to stereo.
>
> While it reverts back to stereo in reality, the sound preferences panel
will still say that it's outputting 5.1 surround sound audio. To bring 5.1
back, one much switch to a different profile and back to 5.1 while the sound
is still playing.
>
> There are no messages in the kernel ring buffer which indicate any audio
issues at the driver level; the only visible diagnostic is getting this
message while playing mpg321 music (and once the first one is emitted, it's
back to stereo):
>
> mbt@zest:~/Music/M$ mpg123 MIA\ -\ Paper\ Plane...

[Raymond (superquad-vortex2)]

seem to be related to PA set the start threshold to -1

if you look at pcm.c , the start threshold is cast as a signed number in some write function , this mean that snd_pcm_start() still automatically called during wirte instead of manually started by PA server

6740 if (state == SND_PCM_STATE_PREPARED) {
6741 snd_pcm_sframes_t hw_avail = pcm->buffer_size - avail;
6742 hw_avail += frames;
6743 /* some plugins might automatically start the stream */
6744 state = snd_pcm_state(pcm);
6745 if (state == SND_PCM_STATE_PREPARED &&
6746 hw_avail >= (snd_pcm_sframes_t) pcm->start_threshold) {
6747 err = snd_pcm_start(pcm);
6748 if (err < 0)
6749 goto _end;
6750 }
6751 }

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Michael B. Trausch, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please provide the information following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingSoundProblems ?

As well, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p linux <replace-with-bug-number>

Also, could you please test the latest upstream kernel available following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds ? It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Please do not test the kernel in the daily folder, but the one all the way at the bottom. Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please comment on which kernel version specifically you tested and remove the tag:
needs-upstream-testing

This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the text:
needs-upstream-testing

If this bug is fixed in the mainline kernel, please add the following tags:
kernel-fixed-upstream
kernel-fixed-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

where VERSION-NUMBER is the version number of the kernel you tested.

If the mainline kernel does not fix this bug, please add the following tags:
kernel-bug-exists-upstream
kernel-bug-exists-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

where VERSION-NUMBER is the version number of the kernel you tested.

If you are unable to test the mainline kernel, please comment as to why specifically you were unable to test it and add the following tags:
kernel-unable-to-test-upstream
kernel-unable-to-test-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

where VERSION-NUMBER is the version number of the kernel you tested.

Please let us know your results. Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful Bug Reporting Links:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Bug_Reporting_Etiquette
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#A3._Make_sure_the_bug_hasn.27t_already_been_reported
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Adding_Apport_Debug_Information_to_an_Existing_Launchpad_Bug
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Adding_Additional_Attachments_to_an_Existing_Launchpad_Bug

[Raymond (superquad-vortex2)]

can you post the pulseaudio log if the sound is stop during switch profile?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio/Log

why this bug changed from pulseaudio to linux?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]