Using the m-audio delta 44 PCI card in Slacko Puppy

Problems and successes with specific brands/models of computer audio hardware
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the-jub
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Using the m-audio delta 44 PCI card in Slacko Puppy

#1 Post by the-jub »

Hi guys

Did a bit of research for some good sound cards for LINUX and kept finding this (m-audio delta pci card).

So I had one delivered and swiftly installed it, disabled onboard audio from the BIOS and booted Puppy 5.3.1. To my amazement the card just worked out of the box! Nothing to install, nothing to configure, the true definition of plug and play :)

Then came time to test this cards ability's with Audacity. At first everything seemed great, I was able to get all 4 channels to record with minimal effort at 16 bit/44100hz. Upon bumping all the relevant stuff in alsamixer and audacity up to 24 bit/96000hz, I soon noticed that the playback of what I just recorded was all over the place. Like the timing was horribly off(too fast then too slow) and it was stuttering!

Im sort of wondering if the sheer rate of data when recording 4 channels at this quality is just too much for the harddrive to cope with. (this is pure speculation since i don't even know how to do the math on that!?!)

some places I've read said that PCI slots sometimes share resources with each other, but this is the only PCI device that's in the machine.

Any light you guys could shed on this would be greatly received...

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Flash
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#2 Post by Flash »

My wild guess is, the problem is more likely the CPU than the hard disk. You haven't told us anything about your computer. What kind, how fast is the CPU? How much RAM does it have?

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the-jub
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#3 Post by the-jub »

Its an AMD Athlon 64 processor 3500+ with 512mb ram! I believe Im using the latest 32bit Slacko.

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darkcity
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#4 Post by darkcity »

you have a similar processor to me ;- )

it could be the harddrive or cpu. strange that you get fast and slow effect on your record. Do the distortions happen the same across all channels and the same time?

First it may be wise to optimize the OS and software.

options-
1. Optimize Audacity

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... ings#Skips

Also you can give Audacity high process priority by running it with the following command

Code: Select all

nice --10 audacity 
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=76040

2. Try Jack which unfortunately isn't 100% compatible Audacity and I'm not sure if its compiled for slacko

Jack will manage the follow of Audio ensuring it gets priority
http://jackaudio.org/

3. Try Fatdog64 this will allow the OS to take advantage of your processor - again I'm not sure what audio software is compiled.

---

I'm working on compiling Jack and Qtractor for polarpup.

Let us know how you get on ; -) BTW find puppy version with the following command-

Code: Select all

cat /etc/DISTRO_SPECS
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppyVersionInformation

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the-jub
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#5 Post by the-jub »

Right so first things first. I haven't actually got a way to generate 4 tracks of audio simultaneously, until tomorrow night when my guitar buddy's come over. But I was able to make a stereo track and yes the distortions where identically the same on both tracks! EDIT: It was a mono track sent down the left and right by the Behringer mixer Im using.

Using the nice command did stop the track from running slow, but it just ran fast and continued to stutter.

Due to previous experiences with jack I decided to save it as a last resort.

So then I thought its time for Fatdog! Downloaded it burnt it to CD and booted that puppy. Thanks to Mr_Fricks in the IRC who pointed me towards an all in one audio sfs for Fatdog, which contained among many other things Audacity! (sfs omg sfs)

To cut a long story short after about half hour of testing/changing settings between Audacity and Alsamixer I was actually able to record at 24 bit/96000hz and it sounded epic!

Conclusion: Im not 100% sure (because I may have been an idiot overlooking the importance of the rate locking/rate reset/internal clock settings for the m-audio card in Alsamixer), but it would seem using an OS that takes full advantage of all of my processors cores done the trick!

thanks for the help guys :)

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darkcity
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#6 Post by darkcity »

thanks for the update,

where did you get the fatdog64 audio sfs?

jack is damn confusing. found out yesterday that there are two versions simultaneously being developed in different languages ; -)

:idea:

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playdayz
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#7 Post by playdayz »

the-jub, I use the M-Audio AP 2496 and just today I packaged the mixer for it. It seems to work in Slacko 5.3.2.7. Maybe the mixer would give you more control or be useful in some way. It is called Envy24 for ICE 1712 cards so *I think* it will work with your card.
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the-jub
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#8 Post by the-jub »

darkcity, got all in one audio sfs from here!

http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/sfs/500

ibiblio is one sweet place for puppy.

playdayz, interesting. Found this link to 5.3.2.7 http://www.smokey01.com/01micko/slacko/slacko-5.3.2.7 but there seems to be two, 2.7 and 2.7p. What one should one get? Whats the difference?

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playdayz
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#9 Post by playdayz »

the-jub wrote:darkcity, got all in one audio sfs from here!

http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/sfs/500

ibiblio is one sweet place for puppy.

playdayz, interesting. Found this link to 5.3.2.7 http://www.smokey01.com/01micko/slacko/slacko-5.3.2.7 but there seems to be two, 2.7 and 2.7p. What one should one get? Whats the difference?
5.3.2.7 is the testing Slacko so I assume the envy mixer will run in all Slacko.
.

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the-jub
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#10 Post by the-jub »

playdayz, good work your pet works great for me in 5.3.1. Some digital stuff I don't need but the ability to make profiles and monitor the PCMs is spot on!

So now back in slacko and just realized the audacity that I originally had installed was from the forum!
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=75783
The audacity now in Fatdog is from a sfs, and probably has the correct libsamplerate or some such? (Also that sfs has loads, if not all of the audacity plugins)

Could some kind person point me in the right direction to download the audacity for slacko, or do you guys think I should persevere with the one from the link?

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darkcity
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#11 Post by darkcity »

updated wiki - there is another 1.3.14 audacity for slacko (but I thinks its the same pet file) or there's a 1.3.12 version
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/audacity

whats wrong with the one in the link? :twisted:

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the-jub
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#12 Post by the-jub »

After testing both 1.3.14 audacity's for slacko (the one from the forum http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=75783 and the one from ibiblio http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... ges-slacko) I can report they both work nice!

It would seem I did something strange to the original install, possibly concerning libsamplerate. Read somewhere that libsamplerate was not GPL to begin with, so there was an open source one made called libresample. But now libsamplerate is GPL. Theres a chance libresample dose not sample at 96khz and I believe that this was causing the original problems! How ever we my never know because I nuked that slacko and put fatdog on the drive instead.

Any who Im now getting perfect results in both slacko and fatdog64.

P.S
sorry for being a noob and claming they did not work! :(

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