Arch Linux

Hirager

Member

Registered: 2010-04-10

Posts: 6

[SOLVED] Pulseaudio has problem with my Asus Xonar DS card.

This is a fresh installation of Arch Linux. I am sure I configured the base system properly. My problem is with surround sound on Xonar DS card. After login, in KDE settings it is listed together with my GPU HDMI output. It does not pause login process, when PA starts. When I play some music, it does sound like 192KHz on RT kernel should. With one big issue - no remixing. It is plain stereo without LFE redirection. When I try to change volume with kmix, nothing changes, despite the main channel being set to master Xonar. When I try to change the output mode in KDE settings to anything else, the output changes to dummy and stays that way until relogin.  I tried every possible troubleshooting procedure I could find on the Arch wiki. I messed with config files. Now I restored the configuration to default with minimal changes I want to have (like higher default sample rate). Here is a snippet of "journalctl | grep pulse" from the moment of login:

lut 09 09:53:20 hirager-5 pulseaudio[2569]: [pulseaudio] alsa-mixer.c: Volume element Master has 8 channels. That's too much! I can't handle that!
lut 09 09:53:20 hirager-5 pulseaudio[2569]: [pulseaudio] alsa-mixer.c: Volume element Master has 8 channels. That's too much! I can't handle that!
lut 09 09:53:20 hirager-5 pulseaudio[2569]: [pulseaudio] alsa-mixer.c: Volume element Master has 8 channels. That's too much! I can't handle that!
lut 09 09:53:20 hirager-5 pulseaudio[2569]: [pulseaudio] alsa-mixer.c: Volume element Master has 8 channels. That's too much! I can't handle that!
lut 09 09:53:20 hirager-5 pulseaudio[2569]: [pulseaudio] alsa-mixer.c: Volume element Master has 8 channels. That's too much! I can't handle that!
lut 09 09:53:20 hirager-5 pulseaudio[2569]: [pulseaudio] alsa-mixer.c: Volume element Master has 8 channels. That's too much! I can't handle that!
lut 09 09:53:20 hirager-5 pulseaudio[2569]: [pulseaudio] module-gconf.c: Unable to read or parse data from client.
lut 09 09:53:20 hirager-5 pulseaudio[2569]: [pulseaudio] module.c: Failed to load module "module-gconf" (argument: ""): initialization failed.
lut 09 09:53:20 hirager-5 pulseaudio[2569]: [pulseaudio] main.c: Module load failed.
lut 09 09:53:26 hirager-5 pulseaudio[2755]: [pulseaudio] pid.c: Daemon already running.

When I experiment with the KDE settings of PulseAudio, more errors show in the log, but I decided they are a result of a root problem happening on startup.
For reference, my /etc/pulse/daemon.conf:

# This file is part of PulseAudio.
#
# PulseAudio is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# PulseAudio is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
# General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
# along with PulseAudio; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307
# USA.

## Configuration file for the PulseAudio daemon. See pulse-daemon.conf(5) for
## more information. Default values are commented out.  Use either ; or # for
## commenting.

; daemonize = no
; fail = yes
; allow-module-loading = yes
; allow-exit = yes
; use-pid-file = yes
; system-instance = no
; local-server-type = user
; enable-shm = yes
; shm-size-bytes = 0 # setting this 0 will use the system-default, usually 64 MiB
; lock-memory = no
; cpu-limit = no

; high-priority = yes
; nice-level = -11

; realtime-scheduling = yes
; realtime-priority = 5

exit-idle-time=0
; exit-idle-time = 20
; scache-idle-time = 20

; dl-search-path = (depends on architecture)

; load-default-script-file = yes
; default-script-file = /etc/pulse/default.pa

; log-target = auto
; log-level = notice
; log-meta = no
; log-time = no
; log-backtrace = 0

 resample-method = src-sinc-medium-quality
; resample-method = speex-float-3
 enable-remixing = yes
 enable-lfe-remixing = yes

; flat-volumes = yes

; rlimit-fsize = -1
; rlimit-data = -1
; rlimit-stack = -1
; rlimit-core = -1
; rlimit-as = -1
; rlimit-rss = -1
; rlimit-nproc = -1
; rlimit-nofile = 256
; rlimit-memlock = -1
; rlimit-locks = -1
; rlimit-sigpending = -1
; rlimit-msgqueue = -1
; rlimit-nice = 31
; rlimit-rtprio = 9
; rlimit-rttime = 1000000

 default-sample-format = s24le
 default-sample-rate = 192000
; alternate-sample-rate = 48000
; default-sample-channels = 2
; default-channel-map = front-left,front-right

; default-fragments = 4
; default-fragment-size-msec = 25

; enable-deferred-volume = yes
; deferred-volume-safety-margin-usec = 8000
; deferred-volume-extra-delay-usec = 0

After removal of /etc/pulse and reinstallation of PA the client.conf file did not get recreated.

EDIT: I removed all sound configuration files from my home directory and reinstalled the system. Now I have no sound at all. This situation sucks. I am going to test my hardware on newest testing Ubuntu LiveCD.

Last edited by Hirager (2013-02-12 10:11:40)

Hirager

Member

Registered: 2010-04-10

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] Pulseaudio has problem with my Asus Xonar DS card.

I admit it - I did rage quit this topic. Now that I have cooled down I discovered the fix: I commented out default-sample-format and default-sample-rate. Now the Xonar works as supposed, but I still don't know if it is saturated with the best audio source possible.

Last edited by Hirager (2013-02-12 10:11:25)

ZekeSulastin

Member

Registered: 2010-09-20

Posts: 266

Re: [SOLVED] Pulseaudio has problem with my Asus Xonar DS card.

You can get that data (and a lot more) by invoking `pacmd list-sinks` in a terminal - look for your card in the output and you'll get sample format (bits and KHz), configured/actual latency, and much more