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d_fajardo

Member

Registered: 2017-07-28

Posts: 1,686

[Solved] qsynth stops playing sound after a period of time

I have a music Korg Air MIDI keyboard setup to use qsynth as the synthesizer. When I run qsynth, the keyboard functions normally - I hear sounds - but after a while, perhaps 5 minutes or so, I then lose sound. From qsynth I can see events are still triggered when I press keys on the keyboard but I get no sound. Also I notice, using top, that the qsynth process that is currently running is replaced by something called irq/202-AudioDSP. When I try to restart qsynth, qsynth crashes. When I try to kill the irq/202-AudioDSP process, I can't kill it. It continues to run. The only way I can play the keyboard again is to reboot my laptop. But then I get the same behaviour - it plays for a while with qsynth but the qsynth process gets replaced by irq/202-AudioDSP and that's when I lose the sound.

This only happens on my laptop, an X1 Carbon Gen 11 Thinkpad. I have exactly the same setup for my desktop but when I attach the keyboard there qsynth doesn't have an issue. The keyboard functions normally there.

Any way to debug this? And why am I unable to kill the irq/202-AudioDSP process?

Last edited by d_fajardo (2024-06-14 15:25:03)

d_fajardo

Member

Registered: 2017-07-28

Posts: 1,686

Re: [Solved] qsynth stops playing sound after a period of time

I have traced the issue to the sof-firmware. I created /etc/asound.conf with the following:

ctl.!default {
     type hw
     card sofhdadsp
}

pcm.!default {
     type hw
     card sofhdadsp
}

The behaviour remains the same - I can play  for a while but then the interupt happens and I lose sound - but this time around, unlike before, the interrupt process get's killed as well when I stop qsynth. And another bonus is, connection works via bluetooth in my laptop.
I have a feeling it's a configuration problem with alsa, pipewire or wireplumber. I don't have specific pipewire.conf nor a custom wireplumber.conf. I'm not entirely sure how to use those.
Is it possible to disable the interrupt from happening?

Anyways I solved it by using Jack2 instead of pipewire-jack setup with qjackctl. The interrupt process still exist but keyboard keeps producing sound.

EDIT: Added bonus that I can connect via bluetooth as well with my laptop (but not with the desktop. Laptop is much newer.)

Last edited by d_fajardo (2024-06-14 15:26:34)