Hi
@wolftune!
Thanks so much for your testing. You found a couple of bugs which I have prepared fixes for and have uploaded to
https://github.com/geoffreybennett/scar ... rlett-gen3 with the tag v5.12.13s1 (precompiled packages coming soon too...)
wolftune wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 12:12 am
Some feedback on testing (with 3rd gen 18i8 and the .deb kernel release files on KDE Neon):
Line 01 Mute (and 02 through 08 also) is confusing label because enabling them is muted, and **muting** the mutes is how to turn the output on. Would be much better to label them "enable" or "active" instead of "mute".
I don't understand what you mean by "muting the mutes". Turning the mute on turns the output off and turning the mute off turns the output back on. Every mute button I've ever seen works like that, and certainly on the 18i8 Gen 2, 18i20 Gen 2, and 18i20 Gen 3 models which have physical mute buttons, mute on = muted.
wolftune wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 12:12 am
It would also help to call them "Line 01 out" and not just "Line 01" because that would make it that much more obvious that this is a playback setting.
The controls are actually called "Line 01 (Monitor L) Playback Volume" and "Line 01 Mute Playback Switch" etc. but alsamixer removes the words "Playback Volume" and "Playback Switch" and puts volume/switch controls on the Playback page called "Line 01 (Monitor L)" and "Line 01 Mute". Have a look at the output of
Code: Select all
amixer controls -cUSB | grep "Line 01"
to confirm.
wolftune wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 12:12 am
I cannot "mute" (turn off) the "Line # Mute" settings *unless* I turn the control to SW instead of HW. But with the SW settings, only the headphone knobs work, the large Monitor knob does nothing.
When the control is set to "HW" you need to use the master Mute control. "SW" means that the per-output software controls for volume and mute are enabled and the Monitor knob is disabled. "HW" is the opposite: Monitor knob (plus the Dim and Mute controls you mention later) enabled, per-output software controls disabled.
wolftune wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 12:12 am
This means there's no way to have the Monitor knob *active* and *also* hear anything from outputs 01-04. In other words, no way to actually use that knob at all.
I think you've got the master mute enabled. Disable that and then you can have the Monitor knob active and hear things from outputs 01-04. I think you turned Speaker Switching off at some point. When you do that, the interface activates the master mute.
wolftune wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 12:12 am
It would be really ideal if the LR pairs of outputs (1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8) were recognized as a stereo set that would move together.
Yes, that would be nice. Unfortunately that needs a better mixer than AlsaMixer or QasMixer.
wolftune wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 12:12 am
Since alsamixer can still separate them when recognized that way, this would be an improvement all around. Maybe the output mute controls would be good that way too, not sure if that's as feasible or practical either implementation or interface.
I did originally consider having them all as stereo controls, but as the outputs can be used independently I thought it better to have them as mono controls. I think the mixer user interface should let you select mono/stereo for each pair of inputs.
wolftune wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 12:12 am
PAD control is missing for Line in 3 and 4.
Fixed in next release
.
wolftune wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 12:12 am
While most controls are reflected in both AlsaMixer and QasMixer if they are changed in either one, Phantom Power Persistence doesn't change in the other when changed in one. Perhaps that means it isn't actually working? I haven't figured out how to verify that yet.
Oops! Also fixed in next release. It does actually work, just the notification to other mixer programs wasn't happening. To verify it working, when you turn off/on the interface the phantom power state will be retained if phantom power persistence is enabled. If phantom power persistence is disabled then the interface will always power up with phantom power disabled.
wolftune wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 12:12 am
I did find another case where AlsaMixer and QasMixer don't update each other: the Line output "mute" settings (the ones I said above should be renamed "enabled"). They both do succeed at the changes, but changing one does not reflect the change in the other mixer.
Yes, same cause. Fixed in next release.
wolftune wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 12:12 am
There are two other system-wide looking things called "Dim" and "Mute" for Playback. What are those? I can't tell what they do.
For outputs that have the Volume Control set to HW, enabling Dim will reduce the volume by ~18dB and enabling Mute will silence them. The per-output Mute controls that are disabled will reflect the master Mute control.
Two things that might trip you up:
- QasMixer doesn't seem to update the Line Mute controls when the master Mute control is changed. I think this is a bug in QasMixer because AlsaMixer works correctly.
- When you switch Speaker Switching to Off, the interface sets the master Mute control on ("for safety" says the 18i8 manual).
wolftune wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 12:12 am
Last important detail: I'm unable to use less than 128 for buffer setting, it has lots of xruns with 64 or 32 (though this worked with gen1 and gen2 devices I've used in the past). I did turn off USB_AUTOSUSPEND in tlpui and hit "save" (I don't know if that's enough, but it wasn't needed before with the other devices), and I am using performance for cpufreq governor.
Also, jack_bufsize doesn't work at all no matter how I set it. Incidentally, "switch master" in Cadence *does* work.
Sorry, I have no idea about these things. The mixer driver is pretty much unrelated to the USB latency/performance on the audio side, and I'm only an expert on one of those!
Thanks again for spotting those issues!
Regards,
Geoffrey.