Alsa configuration on new AMD system [SOLVED]

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The Main Man · Post by **The Main Man** » Sat Feb 27, 2021 4:26 pm

figueroa wrote:I have neither .asoundrc or /etc/asound.conf and firefox and firefox-bin work just fine with sound ALL of the time. Do you have a link to a site with sound that won't play wihtout .asoundrc?

FYI: https://alsa.opensrc.org/Asoundrc

Sure it works, like I said ... if you want rate higher than 48000 and you specify in your alsa config file 'rate 96000' , the sound will not work.
Firefox-bin will still work, because that one is using apulse and not alsa.

Link doesn't matter, it's not partial, there's just no sound anywhere.
I don't know why is it so hard to grasp that, again, if you don't configure anything then it's gonna work, but if you specify rate higher than 48000 firefox (source based) will have no sound.

Here's my .asoundrc, you can see I've commented out rate 96000, firefox is the only app I'm having issues with that rate, otherwise I would use it.
48k is fine that said.

Code: Select all

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Cards
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
pcm.onboard_card {
   type hw
   card 2

   format S32_LE
   #rate 96000
   rate 48000
}

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# LADSPA plugin
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
pcm.ladspa {
    type ladspa
       slave.pcm "upmixplug";
       #path "/usr/lib64/ladspa:/usr/lib/ladspa";
	   path "/usr/lib64/ladspa";
       plugins [{
           label sc4m
	   #label dysonCompress
           input {
               #         RMS/peak   attac time (ms)   release time (ms)   threshold (dB)   ratio   knee radius   Makeup gain
               #controls  [1         1.5               401                 -10              20      5             	 12]
	       controls  [0         10                 175                 -22       	   3       3.5                    9] 
	       #controls  [0         5                 401                 -22       	   10      3.5                   12]
	       #controls  [0         1               0.5                 0.99] #dyson

        }
    }]
}

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# 6ch alsa configuration
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
pcm.setup_6ch {
   type plug # format conversion
   slave.pcm "ladspa"
}

pcm.upmixplug {
  type plug
  slave.pcm "upmixer"
}

pcm.upmixer {
   type upmix # on-demand upmixing
   slave.pcm "dmixplug"
   channels 6
}

pcm.dmixplug {
   type plug
   slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.dmixer {
   type dmix # multi-stream mixing
   ipc_key 4897
   
   slave {
      pcm "onboard_card"
      channels 6 # adjust as necessary (e.g. 8 for 7.1 audio)
      format S32_LE
      #rate 96000
      rate 48000
   
      #period_time 21333
      period_time 0
      period_size 1024 # double if you notice increased CPU load or crackling
      # halve if you like lower latency
      # (e.g. when adjusting volume with softvol enabled)
      #buffer_time 170666
      buffer_time 0
      buffer_size 8192 # some applications do not like smaller buffers
   }
}

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Global configurations
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# for better quality convertion
defaults.pcm.rate_converter "speexrate_medium"

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# My defaults
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
pcm.!default pcm.setup_6ch

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Sat Feb 27, 2021 6:41 pm

Interestingly enough I just got alsa sound working in palemoon (ff derivative) and it turned out to be alsa config related.

Videos would play but no sound.

.asounrc originally looked like this

Code: Select all

pcm.!default {
    type hw
    card 1
    device 0
}

ctl.!default {
    type hw
    card 1
    device 0
}

Which worked for everything except ff/pm

Found a thread, don't remember where and they had the person modify his .asoundrc to this

Code: Select all

defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.pcm.device 0
defaults.ctl.card 1

Which works in ff/pm and the other things.

They person in the thread (I'll have to re-find it) said that the difference is that with {} brackets, it removes everything set (behind the scenes) for that device.

I'm guessing it has to do with dmix or something like that, because the reason I went with {} is that I didn't want dmix (modifies the sound, resample, etc) to mess with the sound quality.

I'm going to play some more and see if I can set something up just for ff/pm and leave other apps alone.
Note: My card is card 1 (not 0) device 0, so modify accordingly

Edit to add: Played with it some more and got the result I wanted (I can only play one device at a time which is what I want and the sample rate is left alone.

So, ff/pm play sound with videos now, and deadbeef, mpv, etc still continue playing the way they did with this .asounrc.

Code: Select all

pcm.!default {
type plug
 slave {
  pcm "hw:1,0"
  rate "unchanged"
 }
}

defaults.ctl.card 1

The Main Man · Post by **The Main Man** » Sat Feb 27, 2021 8:38 pm

Configuration matter

didn't know about "rate unchanged", interesting, that means don't convert the source rate ?

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Sat Feb 27, 2021 8:58 pm

Yes, unchanged says leave it alone, don't try and resample (at least that's my understanding at the moment)

Yeah, I was checking with a 44,100 and a 48,000 file, it reports as I expected.

Streaming radio

Code: Select all

$ cat  /proc/asound/card1/pcm0p/sub0/hw_params
access: MMAP_INTERLEAVED
format: S32_LE
subformat: STD
channels: 2
rate: 44100 (44100/1)
period_size: 1024
buffer_size: 8192

Firefox/youtube

Code: Select all

access: MMAP_INTERLEAVED
format: S32_LE
subformat: STD
channels: 2
rate: 48000 (48000/1)
period_size: 1200
buffer_size: 4800

Note: I'm using card1 (2nd snd card) so change according to your setup

Edit to add: tests on a couple of flacs I had laying around

Code: Select all

access: RW_INTERLEAVED
format: S32_LE
subformat: STD
channels: 2
rate: 96000 (96000/1)
period_size: 2400
buffer_size: 9600

access: RW_INTERLEAVED
format: S32_LE
subformat: STD
channels: 2
rate: 192000 (192000/1)
period_size: 4800
buffer_size: 19200

The Main Man · Post by **The Main Man** » Sun Feb 28, 2021 10:46 am

FWIW I switched from firefox to librewolf last night, sound works the same way as in firefox, which is expected.
The bin version however is different than firefox-bin, I didn't emerge it but out of curiosity just wanted to see if apulse is going to be used, for some reason it wants wayland
For firefox-bin only apulse is needed (in my case when I want to emerge it), librewolf-bin is different for some reason
librewolf (source version) didn't need any deps, I just emerged librewolf

Code: Select all

# emerge librewolf-bin

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild  N     ] dev-util/patchelf-0.10::gentoo  155 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/wayland-1.18.0::gentoo  USE="-doc" 444 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/wayland-protocols-1.20::gentoo  110 KiB
[ebuild   R   ~] media-libs/mesa-21.0.0_rc5::gentoo  USE="X classic dri3 egl gallium gbm gles2 llvm lm-sensors vdpau vulkan vulkan-overlay wayland* zstd -d3d9 -debug -gles1 -opencl -osmesa (-selinux) -test -unwind -vaapi -valgrind -xa -xvmc -zink" VIDEO_CARDS="radeonsi (-freedreno) -i915 -i965 -intel -iris (-lima) -nouveau (-panfrost) -r100 -r200 -r300 -r600 -radeon (-v3d) (-vc4) -virgl (-vivante) -vmware" 0 KiB
[ebuild   R    ] x11-libs/gtk+-3.24.24-r1:3::gentoo  USE="X introspection vim-syntax wayland* (-aqua) -broadway -cloudprint -colord -cups -examples -gtk-doc -sysprof -test -xinerama" 0 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] media-sound/apulse-0.1.13::gentoo  USE="-debug -sdk -test" 115 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] www-client/librewolf-bin-85.0.1::librewolf  USE="alsa ffmpeg startup-notification -pulseaudio (-selinux) -wayland" 77,842 KiB

Total: 7 packages (5 new, 2 reinstalls), Size of downloads: 78,664 KiB

The following USE changes are necessary to proceed:
 (see "package.use" in the portage(5) man page for more details)
# required by www-client/librewolf-bin-85.0.1::librewolf
# required by librewolf-bin (argument)
>=x11-libs/gtk+-3.24.24-r1 wayland
# required by x11-libs/gtk+-3.24.24-r1::gentoo[wayland]
# required by www-client/librewolf-bin-85.0.1::librewolf
# required by librewolf-bin (argument)
>=media-libs/mesa-21.0.0_rc5 wayland

Would you like to add these changes to your config files? [Yes/No]

figueroa · Post by **figueroa** » Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:52 pm

Who is behind Librewolf and why should it be trusted? I downloaded the AppImage and it won't run because it requires Wayland. Pthft!

The Main Man · Post by **The Main Man** » Sun Feb 28, 2021 4:00 pm

Why should you trust anyone?
It's just a patch on top of latest firefox, nothing spectacular, all of that could be done manually
Wayland req for binary packages is weird though, source version doesn't need it, bizarre.

figueroa · Post by **figueroa** » Sun Feb 28, 2021 4:21 pm

The Wayland dependency of the binary, and only having a Debian unstable repository gives the project the feel of a very busy one-man (or very few men) project. Not having very many eyes on a project tend to lead to unintended consequences.

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Sun Feb 28, 2021 4:26 pm

Wayland is required (at least the libs because that's the way they built the binary) but you don't have to run librewolf under wayland, it will also run under X11.
The wayland stuff is (dev-libs/wayland), they create libwayland, that wayland aware apps need to run, no different than creating libX11.
Eta: The wayland-protocols stuff goes with wayland, it's kind of like xorg-proto to X11. It's all dev libs/include stuff.

I've just started looking at wayland lately, simply because I'm interested in where it is at the moment.

I'm not running librewolf at the moment, because I'm not running gtk3 yet.
And I'd have to compile it with the wayland flag.
But the upside would be that I can then run either X11 stuff or wayland stuff with gtk3.

As for whether it is more secure or less than FF, like everyone else I'd have dig through the source code to find the answer.

ETA2: I just looked at the latest firefox-bin (78.8 and 86.0) and guess what they also have wayland built in (gtk by way of gtk3), and thus a ebuild dependency.
So librewolf is really following what ff does (minus the telemetry, etc)

The Main Man · Post by **The Main Man** » Sun Feb 28, 2021 8:48 pm

About trust, everything is open sourced so that's good enough for me.
I like the privacy settings it provides, without me having to worry about many hidden settings, various patches, special profiles etc.
That's tedious to setup and configure.
It's little behind, couple of days I would say, I compiled v85 yesterday and I saw update today to v86, I'm emerging it right now as I type this

I like firefox, works very well for me, working with pure alsa is very nice, privacy settings out of box are good but there's still telemetry going on, google ties etc.
So, this LibreWolf project is adding even more, getting rid of all the noise that's in the stock firefox, using it for 24hrs and I like it, and will use it, firefox is depcleaned

figueroa · Post by **figueroa** » Sun Feb 28, 2021 8:52 pm

kajzer wrote: ...
firefox is depcleaned

That's a giant step. Please keep us advised.

The Main Man · Post by **The Main Man** » Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:26 pm

Sure will bud, glad you found that amusing!