[haiku] A little audio survey

Hi All,

A number of us are suffering what look to be very similar audio problems,
while others seem to see no difficulties at all.  There are tickets scattered
all over Trac that seem to refer to these (7284, 7285, 7442, 7546, and others
going quite a way back).  I think it would help track all this down if we could
survey who is having problems and what their audio driver is.

There are two distinct experiences that actually seem to be interrelated
in some way.

Some installations will not produce sound immediately after boot up, but
sound will start working later.  This appears to somehow be a result of
a large (default) buffer size in the driver.  The auich driver is an
example of this; there is a settings file that can be put in the kernel
add-ons folder and given a smaller buffer size, and sound will immediately
start working. (see #7284).  The large buffer size also results in a
latency of ~1/5 sec.

The reason for this large buffer is that a shorter default causes audio
'crackles' when, for instance, a window is moved (#4656).  Latency is
actually also getting increased, and eventually output may become completely
garbled.

So, what I think would be useful to know is:

  What audio-hardware/driver are you using? (listdev will tell you the
  hardware.  'ps -a' or syslog should let you dig out the driver info.)

  Do you experience either of the above effects? (If sound works, please
  try 'wiggling' a window around and see if you hear crackles.)

  What does Cortex show as the latency for, say, MediaPlayer playing an
  mp3?  Also, what does it show as the buffer-size in the link to the
  driver?

  How do you normally use the audio -- just playing media, or are you
  interested in real-time sound generation too?

For starters, on my system:

    Audio: Intel AC97.  Driver: auich
    Default setup: no sound at boot-up;
                   latency: ~170 msec; buffer 16384 bytes (4096 frames)
    Revised params: sound OK at boot, but crackles and eventual garbling;
                    latency: 16-22 msec; buffer 1024 bytes (256 frames)
    I mainly want to drive audio from my MIDI keyboard, so a short latency
    is essential.

I also have Scott's old Thinkpad, which needs OSS for audio.  This has
the delayed sound problem, too (and a large buffer).  Haven't had a chance
yet to delve into OSS to change things, or investigate more deeply.


Thanks,
        -- Pete --

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