Loads of xruns on M-Audio Delta 66

[steevc]

I've reported issues with my system a while back, but recently tried again. I was running Kubuntu 14.04, but have now installed Mint 17. Initially things seemed better with that. Before the card would always start at 48000 instead of 44100. Turning the interface off/on in Pulseaudio Volume would fix that, but the sound would still be a little distorted.

When I first tried it on Mint the card started at 44100 and it seemed okay. I try it again today and it's messing up as above.

The other thing I notice is xruns every 3 or 4 seconds even though I'm using conservative. I was using 128 frames on my old PC. The audio level is low, but I was just testing. Still sounds distorted, but it's obviously not clipping



Initial card settings after start-up are

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steve@trillian ~ $ cat /proc/asound/card3/pcm0p/sub0/hw_params 
access: MMAP_INTERLEAVED
format: S32_LE
subformat: STD
channels: 10
rate: 48000 (48000/1)
period_size: 3276
buffer_size: 6553

I've just restarted to see if it fixed it, but still at 48000 and can't seem to get it to switch to 44100. Not sure what this means in Mudita. Master Clock is 44100, but Actual Rate is 48000. Should I be able to change that?




Suggestions welcome.

[steevc]

Not sure the card sample rate matters too much as starting Jack sets it to 44100 anyway. Just need to sort the xrun and distortion issues.

For the distortion could it be overloading somewhere non-obvious? Mudita doesn't show anything red-lining?

BTW I'm running 64 bit low-latency kernel

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Linux trillian 3.13.0-35-lowlatency #62-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Fri Aug 15 02:26:48 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I've done other set-up described on the guide http://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=12922

Actually just installed the kxstudio repos as well, but not sure that makes any difference to my issues.

[steevc]

Just put the Delta back in my old PC where it works better. Zero xruns at 128 frames. It's a shame as the new PC is much quicker and quieter, but maybe there's some incompatibility with the motherboard.

For reference the old PC has an Asus M2NPV-VM with AMD X2 4600. New one is Gigabyte GA-F2A88X-D3H with AMD A8-6500

[artek]

it seems that some program is using your card at 48000 khz
you can use command

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lsof | grep /dev/snd

to see what programs are accessing sound devices

[steevc]

it seems that some program is using your card at 48000 khz
you can use command

Code: Select all

lsof | grep /dev/snd

to see what programs are accessing sound devices

I'll have to try it again some time. When I run that on the new PC that doesn't have that card any more I see lots of results. Would it be the 'pcmC' lines that are important? Those are being used by Alsa and Pulseaudio.

[apathity]

How do you actually identify "xruns"? I'm sure many newbies would like to know.

[artek]

Would it be the 'pcmC' lines that are important? Those are being used by Alsa and Pulseaudio.

yes, in your case (if system don't change card number) pcmC3

[steevc]

How do you actually identify "xruns"? I'm sure many newbies would like to know.

There's an option in Ardour to add a marker when an xrun occurs. Could be useful if you only get a few to spot where you may have to edit to re-record a track. You also get a running count in qjackctl/Cadence etc.

[troathscream]

Just noticed in your screenshots that your periods/buffer setting is set at 3, the delta 66 is a PCI card, shouldn't the periods/buffer be set to 2 for PCI cards?
Maybe you also need to configure your PCI bus latency settings in the bios of your motherboard...
Try an other PCI slot on the motherboard and disable Pulseaudio, i've always had trouble with it.
I completely removed it from my system.

Grtz

[asbak]

Just put the Delta back in my old PC where it works better. Zero xruns at 128 frames. It's a shame as the new PC is much quicker and quieter, but maybe there's some incompatibility with the motherboard.

For reference the old PC has an Asus M2NPV-VM with AMD X2 4600. New one is Gigabyte GA-F2A88X-D3H with AMD A8-6500

Some new motherboards don't have proper native PCI busses, they use some kind of chipset which translates pci-e to pci. If you have such a motherboard you're possibly wasting your time trying to get a pci card to work properly with it.

For what it's worth, I'd personally also rather stick with Asus motherboards. I also have a Gigabyte board and have had no end of problems trying to get rid of audio glitches which plagues it. The Asus stuff just seems better designed imo. Online motherboard reviews don't usually help much because they're more obsessed with overclocking, raw performance, gaming performance and that kind of thing. Not so much stability and clean signal paths.

[steevc]

Just put the Delta back in my old PC where it works better. Zero xruns at 128 frames. It's a shame as the new PC is much quicker and quieter, but maybe there's some incompatibility with the motherboard.

For reference the old PC has an Asus M2NPV-VM with AMD X2 4600. New one is Gigabyte GA-F2A88X-D3H with AMD A8-6500

Some new motherboards don't have proper native PCI busses, they use some kind of chipset which translates pci-e to pci. If you have such a motherboard you're possibly wasting your time trying to get a pci card to work properly with it.

For what it's worth, I'd personally also rather stick with Asus motherboards. I also have a Gigabyte board and have had no end of problems trying to get rid of audio glitches which plagues it. The Asus stuff just seems better designed imo. Online motherboard reviews don't usually help much because they're more obsessed with overclocking, raw performance, gaming performance and that kind of thing. Not so much stability and clean signal paths.

I can't really justify buying more new hardware at the moment, so I'll just have to get by with what I have for now. It's hard to know what's best to buy anyway. I did a bit of recording on the old PC yesterday and it worked pretty well. I got a few random xruns, but they didn't cause me any problems. They can be minimised by not running any apps that are not essential whilst making music. Browsers definitely cause issues. I intend to try some USB interfaces on the new PC to see how well they work. In the longer term I may look into the newer USB 2.0 interfaces, but my Delta fills my needs for now.