I want my reliable laptop based Amarok jukebox back

Sat Aug 10 08:50:47 UTC 2013

My recipe is quite simple: if it works, don't fix it.
I'm still on KDE3 and Amarok 1.4, no Pulseaudio, just Alsa.

Regards
Miguel Angel

2013/8/8 Martin Steigerwald <Martin at lichtvoll.de>

> Using phonon-backends mailing list as I didn´t found any user related
> phonon
> mailing list, if people who can help with phonon are subscribed to Amarok
> mailing list, feel free to drop phonon-backends mailing list from Cc.
>
>
> Hi!
>
> Once upon a time I had a ThinkPad T23 with KDE 3 and Amarok 1.4, first
> without,
> then with Sonica Theater USB 1.1 sound card. And it just played music.
> Reliable, even after some kernel scheduler improvements I tested for Ingo
> Molnar without any glitches even when I moved around windows or did
> whatever
> on that box. It just played and the world was good. There have been issues
> once in a while, but generally it just worked. Also sound worked just
> nicely
> after hibernation. For the USB sound card for a time I had to unload usb
> sound
> module from kernel before hibernation and load it again (with TuxOnIce and
> hibernate script back then).
>
> Then I switched to KDE 4.2 and Amarok 2 and Phonon. And since then I cannot
> remember to have had this "it just works" reliability that I had with KDE 3
> and Amarok 1.4 without Phonon.
>
> I know a rant could start this way – and well to some extent I admit this
> is a
> rant –, but I will try not to accuse anyone, I am just at the point where I
> realize: I can give Linux Performance training, I can build a kernel from
> git,
> test changes, build Debian packages and whatnot. But I can´t seem to make
> my
> Amarok jukebox setup reliable. I do not know in which layer to look. I do
> not
> know much about meaningful debugging. All I can do right now is to try this
> and that and this without any actual clue and hope it helps. So I reach out
> for help.
>
> I do this on list, until I have any means to provide meaningful bug
> reports. I
> think I deal with several bugs. I am willing to work from this, there may
> be
> days of inactivity in between, due to real life stuff taking precendence,
> but I
> am willing to invest some time and energy once again, *if* there is a
> reasonable chance to get back reliably working system.
>
> I am even willing to replace hardware. If a ThinkPad or netbookt with
> Intel HD
> audio provides a similar sound quality to that USB sound card, I´d buy one
> and
> ditch the USB sound card. If a USB 2 based sound card is likely to work
> better, I´d buy one. I do not insist on the exact hardware, a ThinkPad T6x
> with Intel HD Audio costs less than 200 Euro used, so what gives.
>
> But I do like to get to a reliably working setup within a *reasonable*
> amount
> of time. Heck, it just needs to play music. My CD player does it, my
> Rockbox
> based Sansa e260v1 does it. It can´t be that difficult. And I like to keep
> Amarok. I am used to it, its a decent player software, it gets song texts,
> wikipedia and well has a nice GUI. I like to continue using it.
>
>
> My basic requirements are:
>
> - If I press play it plays sound. No discussions, no errors. Just play
> sound.
> As my CD player does. I play music mostly for recreational purposes so I am
> not willing to fiddle with things on a regular basis just to have it play
> my
> music. I am not willing to *fight* with my Amarok music jukebox to make it
> behave.
>
> - If playing sound, play sound *fluently*. No dropouts, no hangs, no
> interference noise. Just play.
>
> - On hibernating stop sound, on resuming continue playing where you
> stopped.
> Or well if not continuing right away, let me continue with pressing play
> again. For the time being, I´d even press stop before hibernation and play
> after it.
>
> - I want to have Amarok running for days and weeks with hibernation cycles
> in
> between. I don´t want it to crash after resuming or something like that.
>
>
> Current setup is: ThinkPad T42 with Pentium M 1.8 GHz which should be
> plenty
> to play MP3, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC in decent quality. I do have the Sonica
> Theater USB sound card, cause at least with the ThinkPad T23 where I was
> able
> to hear harddisk sounds in the internal audio output the sound quality was
> just so much better with that USB sound card. Its a USB 1.1 standard 7.1
> sound
> capable soundcard, but I just use stereo, no 7.1 sound which might overload
> USB 1.1 bus. I use a old, good quality Kenwood receiver.
>
> Software wise I use Debian Sid with KDE SC 4.10.5 and Amarok 2.7.1-1 and
> phonon 4.6.0.0-3 with phonon-backend-vlc 0.6.2-2 with ALSA. I didn´t use
> gstreamer as it skipped tracks and whatnot. I do not remember exactly what
> all
> happened with it, but it didn´t work for me. Kernel is 3.10-1-686-pae from
> official experimental debian package.
>
> I do not use Pulseaudio 4 right now cause it still does not detect the USB
> sound card at all times, spamming logs with "usb_set_interface_failed"
> messages. I reported this once, Lennart even answered me back to my bug
> report
> and I admit I did not follow up then, cause what he asked me to do would
> have
> take some time to do and it was not the only bug with PulseAudio back
> then. I
> was just so annoyed by PulseAudio back then that I apt-get purge´d it. I
> would
> be willing to follow-up with this, as it seems that Pulseaudio 4 is the
> first
> Pulseaudio *ever* that is able to play *fluent* sound on the ThinkPad T42.
> With
> Pulseaudio 3 still I had sound drops longer than 20 seconds (this is *no*
> joke).
>
> .kde/share/config/phonondevicesrc has:
>
>
> [AudioDevice_/org/kde/solid/udev/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb3/3-2/3-2:1.0/sound/card1/
> pcmC1D0c:capture]
> cardName=Sonica Theater (USB Audio)
> deleted=false
> deviceNumber=0
> hotpluggable=true
> iconName=audio-card
> index=-8
> initialPreference=36
> isAdvanced=false
>
>
> It has similar entries for this sound card at least a dozen of times, one
> of
> it must be the sound card at the top of the device list in phonon kcm.
>
>
> A snippet of lsusb, I can attach or pastebin completely output somewhere.
>
> Bus 003 Device 005: ID 0763:2007 Midiman M-Audio Sonica Theater
> Device Descriptor:
>   bLength                18
>   bDescriptorType         1
>   bcdUSB               1.10
>   bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
>   bDeviceSubClass         0
>   bDeviceProtocol         0
>   bMaxPacketSize0         8
>   idVendor           0x0763 Midiman
>   idProduct          0x2007 M-Audio Sonica Theater
>   bcdDevice            1.01
>   iManufacturer           1
>   iProduct                2
>   iSerial                 0
>   bNumConfigurations      1
>
>
>
> Current symptoms:
>
> - If I stop playback manually before hibernating and start it after
> hibernating Amarok seems to play sound but I cannot hear anything. If I
> then
> press stop Amarok crashes. In Systemsettings audio test I can play back
> sound.
> I will install debug packages and see whether I get get a meaningful
> backtrace.
>
> - Although playback seems to be quite fluent recently, I still have casual
> dropouts for some reconds. On the ThinkPad T23 I had more dropouts than I
> now
> have on the ThinkPad T42, but heck the hardware is certainly able to play
> back
> some audio, isn´t it? My Amiga 4000 played MP3 it with a 50 MHz 68060, the
> Rockbox based Sansa can do it even with Ogg Vorbis, so…
>
> - Sometimes a loud annoying noise is in the audio. I had this today while
> taking a bath. I jumped up to run into the living room to lower the volume
> as
> it was not something I´d like to expose to my neighbours for longer than
> necessary (USB sound driver issue?). If I unplug USB sound card and plug it
> back in again, it works again.
>
>
>
> So how to proceed? I am especially interested in:
>
> What is working for you?
>
> I highly suspect that its working for a lot of people. So what is different
> with your setup?
>
> Does anybody have a laptop with Amarok on top of his/her Hi-Fi equipment to
> play music, and hibernates and resumes it just fine and all is working?
> Then I
> would greatly appreciate a detailed description of the setup.
>
>
> Any hints on where to start debugging?
>
> Any hints on a best practice setup?
>
> VLC or gstreamer?
>
> Pulseaudio or not? I´d prefer to first get a stable setup *without*
> Pulseaudio
> to have one layer less to debug, but I am also willing to test out
> Pulseaudio
> again, especially as with 4.0 at least the unbearing latency, music
> dropouts
> issues have gone. (With VLC and Pulseaudio on this Sandybridge Dual core
> based
> ThinkPad T520 audio playback on playing a DVD start 5-10 seconds after the
> video playback has started. Without Pulseaudio it started *immediately*.
> On a
> *Sandybridge* based laptop. There is no hardware reason for that – the
> hardware is certainly capable, heck it can encode MP3 as fast as the audio
> CD
> grabber delivers it. This again is no joke.)
>
> USB sound card or not?
>
> What versions of everything?
>
> Actually I think thats already too many questions. Why do I even have to
> decide on this? I wouldn´t like to explain something like this to my
> father or
> any other casual computer user.
>
> IMHO this complexity is a huge mess, unless there is a default that will
> just
> work. Layers upon layers upon layers. Configuration choices over
> configuration
> choices.
>
>
> I just want a jukebox and I want it to work. What are the magic
> ingredients?
> What is known to work?
>
> Thanks,
> --
> Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de
> GPG: 03B0 0D6C 0040 0710 4AFA  B82F 991B EAAC A599 84C7
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