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liquidrc
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 1:17 am    Post subject: No output from pulseaudio/alsa a52 sound Reply with quote

Greetings Gentoo forums!

I have had a wonderful experience installing Gentoo on my main system and I have managed to get a minimal plasma system installed. However, when I use the AC3/IEC958 profile listed inside pulseaudio (the same profiles listed with pacmd), there is no output to my speakers whatsoever.

I know my hardware is there since I have installed the same applications on Arch and have been able to listen to AC3 with no problems. I really wouldn't want this intricate detail to spoil my experience and to give up and install Arch...

What I've tried
Using Clementine (music player) to output to alsa
The playback plays briefly and comes to a halt straight after, with no additional output inside the terminal.

Following the alsa article on the gentoo wiki

  • I've configured the kernel and loaded the correct modules
  • I've tried setting multiple configurations inside /etc/asound.conf and ~/.asound.conf and testing it with speaker-test
  • I've tried muting and unmuting various streams inside alsamixer
  • My user is apart of the audio group


What I've found
a few recent bug reports for some recent changes made to replace libavformat with libswformat
https://github.com/alsa-project/alsa-plugins/issues/22
https://github.com/alsa-project/alsa-plugins/commit/f11e7a8994111f971bc881d4069f768472452f4f
https://github.com/alsa-project/alsa-plugins/issues/5

What I've done/doing
Out of frustration, I have cloned, compiled and make install'd alsa-plugins.git and ffmpeg.git and now my IEC958/AC3 profile will not show up inside pacmd. Instead the opposite has happened and I have ended up with /usr/lib/alsa x86-32 libraries.

In an attempt to recover my alsa-plugins and ffmpeg I am currently compiling both of these packages with abi_x86_32 to support the 32-bit libraries and to see if it makes a difference.

Apart from this issue, I am currently listening to 2 speaker IEC958 with pulseaudio on somafm and it works perfectly.
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liquidrc
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 1:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

:x

Doesn't make a difference compiling with abi_x86_32 it makes things worse. Lol
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liquidrc
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 5:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

When starting pulseaudio I get this error.

Code:

liquidrc@localhost /etc/portage/package.use $ sudo killall pulseaudio && sleep 0.5 &&pulseaudio
[ac3_fixed @ 0x55e6bb1dfa50] The encoder timebase is not set.
[ac3_fixed @ 0x55e6bb1dfa50] The encoder timebase is not set.
[ac3_fixed @ 0x55e6bb1dfa50] The encoder timebase is not set.
[ac3_fixed @ 0x55e6bb1dfa50] The encoder timebase is not set.
[ac3_fixed @ 0x55e6bb1dfa50] The encoder timebase is not set.
[ac3_fixed @ 0x55e6bb1e0f30] The encoder timebase is not set.
[ac3_fixed @ 0x55e6bb1e0f30] The encoder timebase is not set.
[ac3_fixed @ 0x55e6bb1e0f30] The encoder timebase is not set.
[ac3_fixed @ 0x55e6bb1e0f30] The encoder timebase is not set.
[ac3_fixed @ 0x55e6bb1e0f30] The encoder timebase is not set.
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liquidrc
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 12:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Since I make install'd alsa-plugins.git and ffmpeg.git I have since been unable to get the AC3 profile to show back up in pacmd

Instead of wasting time scratching my head I ran a clean install and masked the latest version of ffmpeg 4.4 and now I am running ffmpeg 4.3.2

The IEC958/AC3 plugin has shown up in pacmd and the output is no longer silent! :)
This issue must be related to this issue and therefore I must wait for the next release of alsa-plugins to see changes.
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liquidrc
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 1:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Though the output isn't silent the output is still very choppy to the point it's not usable using alsa-plugins 1.2.2 with ffmpeg 4.3.2

I am currently installing pipewire. If that fails I am going to figure out how to create an alsa-plugins-9999 and an ffmpeg-9999.
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liquidrc
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 1:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The output is better with pipewire but still very choppy to the point of unusable. Could be worth seeing if I missed anything in the kernel...
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liquidrc
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 07, 2021 4:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I couldn't find a way to create an alsa-plugins-9999 and so I gave up in the end and I installed Arch, hopefully this intricate annoyance should be fixed in the next few days.

Arch no longer works with alsa-plugins for AC3, instead it relies on alsa-plugins-git from the AUR for the plugin to keep up with the the latest ffmpeg (4.4).
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liquidrc
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 13, 2021 4:07 pm    Post subject: Fixing the a52 issue Reply with quote

The packages that were causing issues were alsa-plugins and ffmpeg.

alsa-plugins-1.2.2 causes stuttering problems with a52 for some odd reason with ffmpeg-4.3.2 and would be completely silent with ffmpeg-4.4.

My solution was to unmask alsa-plugins-1.2.5 and to use ffmpeg-4.3.2 and I was surprised to hear my sound system finally working

I did this by adding

an unmask file to unmask alsa-plugins-1.2.5 and it's dependency alsa-lib-1.2.5-1.

/etc/portage/package.unmask/alsa.unmask
Code:

=media-plugins/alsa-plugins-1.2.5
=media-libs/alsa-lib-1.2.5-1


and adding alsa-plugins.1.2.5 to accept_keywords to ignore the ~amd64 flag.

/etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/alsa.accept_keywords
Code:

media-plugins/alsa-plugins
media-libs/alsa-lib


masking ffmpeg-4.4 so that the audio can work with alsa-plugins-1.2.5.

/etc/portage/package.mask/ffmpeg.mask
Code:

=media-video/ffmpeg-4.4-r1
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liquidrc
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 17, 2021 7:04 pm    Post subject: alsa-plugins-git and alsa-lib-git is working with ffmpeg 4.4 Reply with quote

I have got alsa-plugins and alsa-lib updated to upstream enabling compatibility with ffmpeg 4.4 furthermore fixing the issue.

I have modified the alsa-plugins and alsa-lib ebuilds from the gentoo repositories to their current upstream commits. I have added these ebuilds to a repo
https://github.com/Turpster/gentoo-repos

For a52 5.1 audio, there is minimal audio crackling when playing games, and is noticeable when concentrating and turning the volume up.
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