Trouble with OSS audio interface under ubuntu 10.04, especially dxr3player
Thomas Orgis <thomas-forum <at> orgis.org>
2010-07-11 15:57:12 GMT
Hi folks,
because of hardware breakage, I replaced my home-grown Linux system that used to play DVDs on the dxr3 card
using dxr3player quite nicely with an install of 32bit ubuntu 10.04 ... this at first meant that I need to
get around without dxr3player, which is not quite available for that system.
I think I came across a .deb I managed to install, but that binary only crashed.
Back to the sources, I've realized that the dxr3player 0.11 code is problematic with a current toolchain
(C++ code/compilers have that tendency:-/) ... well, I finally managed to build the CVS version and get it
working. In the meantime, I also switched to self-built em8300 driver modules from the 0.18 release, but
still using the stock ubuntu kernel (2.6.32-something).
Now, I'm having issues with the sound from the dxr3. I'm actually trying to use it as only sound output for the
machine (thinking about a/v sync when playing via dxr3) and already resorted to killing off pulseaudio as
that really interferes with happiness, a lot (with MPlayer, at least, which I use for other material than
DVDs). The basic trouble of dxr3player is now that when I start it after a normal system boot, it produces
wild static noise on the audio output. This app is using the OSS interface... so I tried to investigate what
other programs do with that, and also found funky effects in mpg123 -o oss (stuttering, but not static noise).
A workaround seems to be to reload the em8300 driver before starting dxr3player, or any other OSS app, for
that matter. I have the impression that client programs manage to mess up the OSS part of the em8300 driver
somehow, the reload fixing the state so that the next app can work. Well, one obvious way forward would have
been to simply tell users to switch to the ALSA interface all-around, which hopefully works better (I only
rememeber some stuttering in the startup desktop tune, but good operation overall, as long as you kick out
pulseaudio). But development of dxr3player is not that rapid (that one could suddenly expect a flawless
ALSA output option), and seeing how development of any sensible alternative for proper DVD playback
(namely mplayer's dvdnav://) is not getting in shape for many years now, it would be really nice if we could
fix up the current em8300 OSS part... dxr3player is the killer app for my dxr3, for sure.
Can people confirm my observation about OSS being troublesome, especially with dxr3player? How far is it
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