BB XM C, Ubuntu 11.10 alsa/portaudio troubles

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1

I’m running a little audio application in C/portaudio that wants to take 8kHz mono audio under Ubuntu on the BB XM C. I actually have two cards. One works and one does not.

  1. Working system: Linux bb 3.1.4-x6 #1 SMP Sun Dec 4 12:00:23 UTC 2011 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux
  2. Not working system: Linux bb2 3.2.7-x5 #1 SMP Sun Feb 26 16:48:22 UTC 2012 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux

These are both Ubuntu 11.10. Both are using the same audio setup files (asound.state). The newer system captures only silence. I can’t seem to get anywhere fiddling with alsamixer or alsactl. The older system is fine.

Apparently #2 has had an update in the sound area. lsmod shows:

Module Size Used by
snd_soc_omap3beagle 2195 0
snd_soc_twl4030 37284 1
snd_soc_omap_mcbsp 8230 1
snd_soc_omap 3353 1
snd_soc_core 106430 4 snd_soc_omap3beagle,snd_soc_twl4030,snd_soc_omap_mcbsp,snd_soc_omap
regmap_spi 1231 1 snd_soc_core
snd_rawmidi 21017 0
snd_pcm 80349 4 snd_soc_twl4030,snd_soc_omap_mcbsp,snd_soc_omap,snd_soc_core
smsc95xx 11334 0
snd_seq_midi_event 6217 0
snd_seq 54502 1 snd_seq_midi_event
snd_timer 19971 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device 6480 2 snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
snd 58177 6 snd_soc_core,snd_rawmidi,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
gpio_keys 6941 0
rtc_ds1307 6466 0
soundcore 7465 1 snd
rtc_twl 4418 0
snd_page_alloc 4959 1 snd_pcm

System #1 has only

Module Size Used by
smsc95xx 10950 0
rtc_ds1307 6350 0
rtc_twl 4402 0
gpio_keys 6801 0

Any suggestions, other than dropping back to the older system?

TIA
Martin

2

Apparently a hardware problem. Why is audio so complicated … ? :slight_smile:

Martin

3

It's usually a kernel module & asound.state settings problem... Some
of it was fixed, but it never made it upstream..

3.1.x i had all the sound modules builtin, with 3.2.x they are all
external modules.. I retest moving them back to builtin to see if it
makes a difference..

Regards,

4

Thanks for the insight. My problem has something to do with the board, since the new OS version works OK on my alternate BBXM. Then I blew air on the bad board (vigorously) and it started to work. (There could have been some metal filings on the board.) The situation does not inspire confidence!

A problem for me is not knowing the internal connectivity of the “soundcard” and driver - what the supported signal paths are and what switching and gain controls should be operative in the BBXM setup. I.e. what should work via alsamixer, alsa-restore, etc. I guess the info is theoretically all there in the doco, but not easy to dig out.

Martin