My first impressions of the Pyra

[EvilDragon]

I've not been able to reproduce it the same way as yesterday yet, but there has been similar behavior under load at least. Nothing keyboard related, moving windows around made it quieter (extra load from compositor if I had to guess). After a bit of messing around, the volume isn't really coming back either. Sometimes the right speaker is a good bit quieter than the left one for short bursts during this as well.
No visible changes in AlsaMixer, nothing for the balance either.
No changes from pressing around the case, though right now keyboard input doesn't affect anything either.

This is kinda weird and inconsistent, but doesn't look like it's hardware at least.
While this does appear to happen under load, it's not like the audio itself ever cuts off or stutters when it happens. Yeah, this is probably not that helpful after all, but something is up.

This can be related to some weird audio mixing / channel mapping.
I already mentioned to aTc during the tester that it sounds as if the audio is coming from both speakers whenever I only play from the left one (as I'm sine waves for testing, this could've been my imagination and I've not further checked it yet).

We're not using the hardware audio mixing feature of the chip yet - so there's only one ALSA device with four channels. The first two are the headphones, the second two the speakers.
Who knows what ALSA makes of that... maybe it tries to do some 5.1 mixing with these four speakers and tries to create a virtual center?

 

[FBnil]

Obligatory complain: The keyboard layout is terrible.

I agree, all hispanics are alienated due to the missing ñ

España - Spain
Es pana - "It's liver" (cooked) or "It's a breakdown" (broken down car)

It's not loud enough to annoy me, so please see this as a single information.

I'm one of those that can hear pretty well, and eventhough the Pandora audio cirquits were created by an audiophile, I could still hear the hiss (white noise) when the screen was active. So to listen to music I either had to disable the screen or use those big headphones that need lots of power and by increasing the volume, the signal/noise ratio was good enough to make the hiss inaudible.
... so it will bug me too.

The Pandora had a noise when the audio cirquits shut down, that one did not annoy me. To me, it was something that defined the Pandora (the hiss will stop after these three? succesive noises).

 

[Letalis Sonus]

Who knows what ALSA makes of that... maybe it tries to do some 5.1 mixing with these four speakers and tries to create a virtual center?

ALSA's default behavior is entirely based on mostly HW-specific configuration templates (/usr/share/alsa), which should always default to an unmodified stereo output. Stereo upmixing is something that one needs to configure manually, it is not an internal feature but requires making use of its channel mapping plugin in a certain way.

However, PulseAudio directly sends its mixed samples to the hardware channels, at this point it is impossible to modify these samples in any way through an ALSA configuration. PulseAudio itself does provide an optional stereo upmix feature, though.

 

[Autian]

One may try to use JACK to test each channel individually, as demonstrated in the following example:

Spoiler

"desk out" is my PulseAudio sink and Hardware Capture/Playback speaks for itself.

with plugin packs like Calf or LSP you can also do some complex audio processing stuff.

It is somewhat fiddly to set up overall, I never got it to run stable on my desktop PC (sometimes crashes out of the blue or freezes). I am using the cadence-claudia (for configuration and for loading plugins) and jack2 packages in Arch Linux. The cadence-claudia from the AUR has the routing application as seen here compared to the regular cadence package.
I don't know if this is helpful to you, hopefully I gave you some ideas here.

 

[aTc]

The problem is that alsa/pulseaudio sees the channel mapping as :
Channel Map: front-left,front-center,front-right,rear-center
Instead of the 4.0 setup it should have by default (which would be front-left,front-right,rear-left,rear-right)
I tried forcing this in several places in the pulseaudio config, but i can't get it to pick it up properly, it's always left,center,....

Also weird is that "pactl list cards" returns no cards at all, which would normally be the place to set these things.

playing a 4 channel wav to the device directly works fine though, that doesn't try to do anything smart with the channel mappings, and you get each individual channel sent to each individual output.

 

[stevenc99]

If Audacity is working already on the Pyra that would be another good way to test audio.
Would be also interesting to play a sine wave from the left speaker at the same time as the *inverted* signal from the right speaker.
If both channels are played correctly, you would notice weird phase effects as you move/turn your head.
If the channels are being "mixed" then you would hear nothing at all.

 

[TrashyMG]

If Audacity is working already on the Pyra that would be another good way to test audio.

sudo apt install audacity

 

[Legodude522]

sudo apt install audacity

I'm in love with how easy that was.

 

[Wally]

Hey all,

As some of you might know i've gotten my Pyra (#9 for those wanting the order number) just a smidgen under 24 hours ago and am finding the experience awesome so far!

To break it down, i'll review by item:

Case: The case has a nice premium feel to it (I got dark chrome) and I see what EvilDragon means with coating the cases Looks like it'll last some time and even if not there'll still be the next revision which i'll happily install the Pyra into when that time comes

Keyboard: I have big stubby fingers and the keyboard still works for me, unfortunately like the Pandora I am really confused by the way the keyboard layout is presented (I blame the multiple keyboard threads and a billion localities we needed to cater for). If the device was a smidgen wider we could've fit a whole qwerty keyboard layout.

Screen: The screen is an absolute stunner, compared to many screens I use this is probably my favourite, it's easy on the eyes, clear and fast. I tried Q*Bert in Stella and it works fantastic with no ghosting).

Speakers: Nice high quality sound, that DAC is special (Although won't see the full potential until the crackling is sorted with Bass).

Heat: The unit does get a little warm but that's like all Phones.

Software: There's a lot of work needed here to be done but that's half of the fun of getting a unit early, to test and assist with making things amazing.

Summary: What a fun little device. Like the Pandora, the potential for amazing software is there with this community we have. I feel the Pyra will be a huge hit with most who get one

 

[matzesu]

Cool, whe have Audacity, this means i could at least play some C64 Sids as long the 3D Chip is not implementated..

Got somewhone else also this "Lid Hinge Gab" like the first Rewiew in this Thread meantioned ? ., Ditnt got a Shipping Mail so it seems like my Pyra Experience have to wait until at least tomorrow

 

[levi]

I guess since it's using the same basic hinge as my Pandora it'll exhibit similar issues to my Pandora. Namely in this case that the lid doesn't land exactly flat when you close the unit. It's still 90% closed, and squeezing it fully closed in a case or a bag or something doesn't seem like it's over stressing it. And you have to look for it to notice it most of the time.

 

[elvissteinjr]

Speaking of the lid, is there a way to change the on-lid-closed behavior? Currently it simply locks the desktop (which I don't even want) and doesn't even turn off the screen. It's certainly not connected to the lid settings present in Mate at least.

 

[levi]

I'm not sure, but if you've got a folder called '/proc/acpi' apparently you can write stuff in there which might help. That's a generated folder, on systems that run procfs though, so if that does work for you you'd need to script it in your .bashrc or some other autorun file.

 

[pyrat]

I'm not sure, but if you've got a folder called '/proc/acpi' apparently you can write stuff in there which might help. That's a generated folder, on systems that run procfs though, so if that does work for you you'd need to script it in your .bashrc or some other autorun file.

In armhf ? I thought acpi was about communication with bios/uefi firmware, and most armhf systems lack that. But I don't know. Maybe it is somehow emulated for compatiblity...

 

[levi]

Like I say I'm not sure. I have it on my x86 systems, but I'm not sure what's needed to even be written to it to have an effect. Could be a red herring, but if you've got it it probably deserves some investigation.

 

[socket]

My Pyra has shipped! Heh.

 

[matzesu]

Dos means „has shipped „ ED put it in a Packet and trow it in one of these yellow post gathering boxes whe have in our German city everywhere
Or does it mean you got the Packet ?
Anyway congratulations ^^


Send from something, i guess ^^

 

[levi]

Generally in English you'd use 'has been delivered' or 'has arrived' if you actually have it in your hands right now. 'Has shipped' is for things that aren't quite here yet, but should still be in the post.

 

[matzesu]

Ok thanks, so Evildragon tow it on a Mail Pigeon (Brieftaube) and this is now on it’s way too the customer ^^


Send from something, i guess ^^

 

[Silent-Hunter]

My Pyra has shipped! Heh.

Which number are you?