PulseAudio performance test (Karmic?)

[onemyndseye]

This is getting alittle off topic but It took some work to figure out so I thought I would include it. This is how I set my laptop up for gaming and movies in surround.

This laptop has 5 speakers total: Shown here

They represent the following channels:
1 - Front Left
2 - Front Right
3 - Rear Left
4 - Rear Right
5 - LFE/Subwolfer (Bottom of laptop)
The OpenAL config: ~/.alsoftrc

format = AL_FORMAT_51CHN16

refresh = 6144
#sources = 256
stereodup = True
drivers = alsa

##
## ALSA backend stuff
##
[alsa]

device = lenovo_surround  # Call my virtually maped device
#periods = 0
mmap = true

Then I needed a proper speaker map to get "5.1 surround".

The default surround device (pcm surround51) had my channels alittle mixed up so I remaped as follows. The syntax I learned for this maping is ` ttable.MAP_CHAN.REAL_CHAN GAIN '

MAP_CHAN = Represented channel
REAL_CHAN = Actual channel as identified by alsa
GAIN = Gain/Volume at a fraction (1 = 100%)
~/.asoundrc

pcm.!default {
	type plug
	slave.pcm "lenovo_surround"
	slave.channels 6
	route_policy duplicate
}


pcm.lenovo_surround {
        type route
        slave.pcm surround51
        slave.channels 6

        # Front  with 50% volume LFE for both channels
        ttable.0.2 0.7	## Front Left		(Speaker 1)
        ttable.1.3 0.7	## Front Right		(Speaker 2)
        ttable.0.5 0.5	## Touch sub		(Speaker 5)
        ttable.1.5 0.5	## Touch sub		(Speaker 5)

        # Rear with 50% volume LFE for both channels
        ttable.2.0 1.0	## Rear Left		(Speaker 3)
        ttable.3.1 1.0	## Rear Right		(Speaker 4)
        ttable.2.5 0.5	## Touch Sub		(Speaker 5)    
        ttable.3.5 0.5	## Touch Sub 		(Speaker 5)   

        # Center (Spkr1+Spkr2) with 50% volume LFE  
        ttable.4.2 0.5	## Center Left		(Speaker 1)
        ttable.4.3 0.5	## Center Right		(Speaker 2)
        ttable.4.5 0.5	## Touch Sub		(Speaker 5)  
              
        # Center Rear  (Spkr3+Spkr4) with 50% volume LFE
        ttable.5.0 0.5	## Center Rear Left	(Speaker 3)
	ttable.5.1 0.5	## Center Rear Right	(Speaker 4)
	ttable.5.5 0.5	## Touch Sub		(Speaker 5)
}

Still playing with the volume levels abit to get that "just right mix" but I've tested this with RO and Quake4 with satisfying results. I dont expect this exact example to work for anyone else or do I truely believe it to be a 100% correct (for instance: the gains in most channels are too high. i.e. Center Rear should total to 1) example of mixing 5.1 surround, but it gave me the results I was looking for and hopefully will save someone the trouble of figuring this crap out lol.

[onemyndseye]

Originally Posted by surak

I've been noticing some nasty problems in with openal+pulseaudio in Karmic. (game freezes, and i can hear the music badly distorted). Anyone else having similar issues?

back on topic:


Yeah.. alot of the same issues with me..

It usually starts with the NGD logo .. the sound clip that plays sometimes distorts. Then during gameplay sound eventually begins to distort and eventually go out completely

infact.. if I explicitly set openal to use pulse in /etc/openal/alsoft.cfg RO hangs at startup (on the checking firewall box)... returns a no responsive state and must be SIGKILL'ed

[RicX]

Originally Posted by surak

I've been noticing some nasty problems in with openal+pulseaudio in Karmic. (game freezes, and i can hear the music badly distorted). Anyone else having similar issues?

Add me to the counter, just as described by onemyndeye, start ok (sometimes the intro logo sound a bit distorted, sometimes not), then you start to hear like static or so, at it increases until the sound totally go out, then, if I try to logout complete freeze of the machine, nasty bug, and nasty pulseaudio eating 9-14% cpu O.o

RicX

[SolomonDean]

everything is working fine for me cept openal gives me a screaming sound at times. fps seem about the same as Jaunty maybe even better. The Lag is a joke unfortunately. although wifi/ethernet is fine for everything else.

[onemyndseye]

Out of the poeple here that have this problem:

Who else is using hda-intel audio? ` lsmod |grep snd_hda_intel `

[kamax]

With my gentoo 64 i have tested the latest pulseaudio/openal some weeks ago and had problems too. The sound just stop working after a moment(just for the game) and some mini freeze.

My best solution was to remove pulseaudio and use alsa.

[Cuchulainn]

If anyone dont want use alsa because it only supports sound for one applications (if i am right?), i can suggest using OSSv4 instead. Its not as easy to install as alsa in most distrubutions but not very hard either. Just download the oss package here and read the installation instruction.
More informations about OSS here.

[DkySven]

Originally Posted by onemyndseye

Out of the poeple here that have this problem:

Who else is using hda-intel audio? ` lsmod |grep snd_hda_intel `

I am using this.

[Ertial]

Originally Posted by onemyndseye

Out of the poeple here that have this problem:

Who else is using hda-intel audio? ` lsmod |grep snd_hda_intel `

I have just a little bit of jittering every now and then with the an Nvidia HDA audio chip.

[Znurre]

Originally Posted by Cuchulainn

If anyone dont want use alsa because it only supports sound for one applications (if i am right?), i can suggest using OSSv4 instead. Its not as easy to install as alsa in most distrubutions but not very hard either. Just download the oss package here and read the installation instruction.
More informations about OSS here.

ALSA supports sound for more than 1 application at a time.
Old OSS which is shipped with most distros does not.