Linux: Alsa Output Distorted After Xruns (With Capture Device Enabled)

Help, Support & Bugs
1

Renoise Beta 6.
Linux OpenSUSE 11.4 x86 MAudio 24/96 XFCE Desktop.

Okay now unfortunately this might be difficult to reproduce on your machines Mr TakTik :( But I thought I’d drop you a note to let you know what’s going on here.

The steps to reproduce on my machine:

  1. Launch Renoise :)
  2. Make sure the ALSA driver is selected in the preferences. Now for me (I have a slow computer) these settings do the trick:

Sample Rate: 44100
Buffer Size: 256
Periods/Buffer: 4

Gives a audio latency of about 23.2msec. Close the preferences dialog box.

  1. Load in a song. (BTW even just loading a song could break my sound output!)
  2. Pick a track and select ‘Track -> Render To Sample’ from the right click context menu.
  3. After it’s done, play the song.

Now if you are lucky the sound output should still be fine. Unfortunately sir Renoise goes into super 2-bit crushed mode on me :( To give you some idea of how my output sounds I’ve attached two OGG files of a single bass line track. The NormalSample.ogg is fine. The CrushedSample.ogg is what it sounds like when I’ve clicked ‘Render To Sample’ or just loaded a song in and click play. Just guessing but anything that possibly causes ALSA xruns (file I/O for example) breaks my sound output. To rectify, you have to open the preferences dialog box and click the reinitialize button.

Does this happen under JACK with the same audio settings? Luckily no. JACK works fine. I would imagine that most people use the JACK audio server with Linux (I have to myself because surely there is a time and place for super 2-bit crushed mode :D )

2

So the output does not break every time you do render, but possibly every time you do get an xrun?
Rendering seems just a way to create an XRun in your case, or does it only happen after/with rendering then?

What are your Jack ALSA settings?
Do you have a capture device (recording device) selected? Does it go away when set it to “none”?
Please try using the exactly same settings in Renoise for ALSA like you do with Jack.

3

Okay Mr TakTik, my JACK settings are (QJackCtl window):

Attachment 2927 not found.

That works 100% no problem :)

Now Renoise ALSA driver i.e. these settings:

Attachment 2928 not found.

That doesn’t work as good :( All manner of things can sometimes break the output of Renoise. Loading songs (sometimes), rendering tracks, record new sample.

Now you mention if I have a capture device selected. Does it go away when set to none? i.e these settings:

Attachment 2929 not found.

I can say sir (quickly testing) that the distorted output problem completely disappears with the above settings :)

Not sure if that helps a bit Mr TakTik :)

4

Yes, a known problem as far as I know. When I use Linux I also don’t set an input, only an output.

5

Ah, okay sir. I’m sorry I didn’t know that :)

Maybe Mr TakTik will be in a better mood rather than people spamming his bug report forum with ‘known’ bugs. At least I try and give you a half decent bug report :)