Audio devices

[Silent-Hunter]

I thought a general thread to talk about audio on Pyra might be good. I tried a C-Media USB soundcard. It works fine but only as an ALSA device, pulsemixer doesn't show it at all.

Is there anything to be said for switching to Pipewire? It seems to support being a drop in replacement for Pulseaudio and JACK and things like that. I wonder if it would work better for Pyra.

 

[vinipsmaker]

I've been hitting PipeWire bugs for several months since I fist decided to give it a try. It may work better than PulseAudio in the long run, but I don't think its current state is something to use as the default in any Linux distro. Maybe offer as an option for people who want to experiment sooner.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

The point where its PulseAudio front-end was considered to be actually usable was reached fairly recently, whatever version is currently available in the repositories is surely way too old to be of use.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

I only tried jack over pipewire on x86_64, it's working perfectly.

 

[elvissteinjr]

I'd honestly be for any audio setup change that stops the insanely loud white noise from happening (even with the volume slider all the way down). Happened twice so far and actually made me pretty scared to use any kind of headphones with the Pyra.
Well, that aside the channel setup is still weird and volume likes to be inconsistent. Not seeing anyone else complain about this stuff though so I'm gonna assume they all play muted or something.

 

[Bosbeetle]

I'd honestly be for any audio setup change that stops the insanely loud white noise from happening (even with the volume slider all the way down). Happened twice so far and actually made me pretty scared to use any kind of headphones with the Pyra.
Well, that aside the channel setup is still weird and volume likes to be inconsistent. Not seeing anyone else complain about this stuff though so I'm gonna assume they all play muted or something.

I guess the rest knows this is still an issue to be solved... I think the audio seems a hard problem to tackle.

 

[EvilDragon]

A temporary fix should be to disable the microphone. At least when daveshah made tests, it never happened when the microphone is disabled.
The problem is that this is a mixture of software and a hardware bug where we missed the workaround. We'll fix that for a later revision of CPU boards, but we couldn't fix it with the current one.
Also, due to tolerances, it might never trigger on most CPU boards but regularly on some.
We need to take a closer look at that and try to find some kind of fix.

In worst case I will have to replace the CPU boards which have that issue with fixed one in the future... this would get pretty expensive for me, but there's nothing else I can do.
So hopefully, not many boards will be affected or we can find some workaround.

 

[elvissteinjr]

I guess the rest knows this is still an issue to be solved... I think the audio seems a hard problem to tackle.

It's true that we all know there are issues to tackle and it's certainly not simple. But I don't think not acknowledging specific issues is going to help.

A temporary fix should be to disable the microphone. At least when daveshah made tests, it never happened when the microphone is disabled.

That's interesting. I don't need the microphone on the Pyra so that'd be fine for me. One time it happened it was right after I plugged in my headset with a 4-pole connector. Without mic on the headset itself though (that part is in fact broken, but does not put out any mic signal on any other system). For the other occurrence I can't really pin down anything, so I'd have to say it was random.

I should probably be a bit more testing on this while I'm at it. Maybe not this late, though.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

How do we disable the microphone? I can't actually get mine to work.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Alsamixer ?
F4 to select the input devices, then space to activate/deactivate.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

My mic doesn't even work, actually. I can't get any input from it.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

You don't see it in alsamixer ?

 

[Silent-Hunter]

You don't see it in alsamixer ?

I do. But even if I turn it all the way up, there's no sound input from it.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Ah my bad, I thought you wanted to deactivate it to cut the noise.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Ah my bad, I thought you wanted to deactivate it to cut the noise.

I did that, I set both main and sub mic to off. The noise still happens, but ONLY when playing Kirby 64 in mupen64plus. It doesn't happen from anything else, not even Mario 64 on the same emulator?

 

[Linux-SWAT]

I guess you unlocked the Kirby 64's audio curse !

 

[Bosbeetle]

I did that, I set both main and sub mic to off. The noise still happens, but ONLY when playing Kirby 64 in mupen64plus. It doesn't happen from anything else, not even Mario 64 on the same emulator?

I still think this might be interesting because I think it is still unknown what actually causes this noise. It has to do with data streams interfering or something, maybe it just happens because Kirby uses a lot of CPU or there is something else triggering it. Im not a dev but do follow some of the discussions, i guess the pyra project makes us all learn a lot.

 

[EvilDragon]

Yes, this is very interesting - and will help with debugging, as it seems that only Kirby64 seems to reproduce this reliably now.
And who knows - maybe not even on every system!

 

[matzesu]

Ok thanks to this threat, i now know how to maybe get my guitarix to work ^^ Ditnt know whit Space..
I use Bluetooth AirPods on the Pyra and hadn’t any issues, but some noise over cable, but I also don’t need the microphone, so I’m also fine..

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Yes, this is very interesting - and will help with debugging, as it seems that only Kirby64 seems to reproduce this reliably now.
And who knows - maybe not even on every system!

Have you tried it? Does it happen on your Pyra?