Arch Linux

Consul

Member

Registered: 2008-03-08

Posts: 10

Compiling and installing the latest ALSA (1.0.16) on x86_64

In order for me to use my sound card (Emu 1212m), I'll need to compile my own ALSA, as the module I need (snd-emu10k1-fpga - note the "fpga" part) isn't a part of standard Arch. My question is, how can I do this and not have future updates from Arch step on my custom configuration? I have all of the latest stable tarballs downloaded from ALSA (alsa-driver, -utils, -tools, -firmware, -lib).

I was pointed to a wiki page about getting ALSA to work, but it assumes the needed modules are available and simply aren't loading for some reason. In my case, the module is not even there.

Thank you very much for the help.

EDIT: While I'm at it, can anyone tell me how the stock kernel is compiled in terms of low-latency capability? I'm wondering if I'll need to compile a custom kernel as well. Thanks!

Last edited by Consul (2008-03-11 02:03:49)

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Compiling and installing the latest ALSA (1.0.16) on x86_64

See thread. There's 3 packages:

alsa-lib
alsa-plugins
alsa-utils

Recompile them to 1.0.16, and compile alsa-driver manually. Some hints:

abs
find /var/abs -name alsa\*
cp -r /var/abs/local/alsa-plugins /var/abs/local/

Last edited by brebs (2008-03-11 02:58:49)

Consul

Member

Registered: 2008-03-08

Posts: 10

Re: Compiling and installing the latest ALSA (1.0.16) on x86_64

I got an error while running ./configure in alsa-lib:

checking for snd_tlv_get_dB_range... no
configure: error: No TLV support code in alsa-lib

A Google search seems to indicate that this has something to do with the Emu driver (though it turned up nothing else, including what the configure error actually is), so I'm wondering how to fix this. Thanks! I got the ALSA tarballs from the ALSA-Project web site, by the way.

Last edited by Consul (2008-03-12 03:02:56)

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Compiling and installing the latest ALSA (1.0.16) on x86_64

Compile alsa-lib *first*.

Consul

Member

Registered: 2008-03-08

Posts: 10

Re: Compiling and installing the latest ALSA (1.0.16) on x86_64

I thought I was. I must have entered the wrong directory by accident. For some reason, my root shell doesn't tell me what directory I'm in. All seems to be well now. Thanks!

Consul

Member

Registered: 2008-03-08

Posts: 10

Re: Compiling and installing the latest ALSA (1.0.16) on x86_64

Well, upon rebooting my computer, I heard a pop out of my speakers during the module load phase, which is promising, except I still have a red X by my speaker volume icon, and gstreamer is still complaining about having no sound device to send to. I tried setting all of my sound preferences to ALSA, and I get the following error when I try to test sound output:

I'll keep hunting, but your help would be greatly appreciated. This is the most trouble I've ever had with installing ALSA from sources, for the record.

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Compiling and installing the latest ALSA (1.0.16) on x86_64

See wiki for debugging.

Consul

Member

Registered: 2008-03-08

Posts: 10

Re: Compiling and installing the latest ALSA (1.0.16) on x86_64

Woohoo! I have sound! It was a permissions issue with the DSP device. Thank you for your help!