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#1 2009-12-23 22:30:46

Frabato
Member
Registered: 2007-10-24
Posts: 267

Recording with OSS4

Hi All,

I can't get ardour or audacity to record with arch64, so I thought I'd try ossrecord. I get this:

[a@cwa ~]$ su
Password: 
[root@cwa a]# ossrecord -v -c 2 -l -s 41000 oss4
/dev/dsp: Device or resource busy

There is some other application using this audio device.
Exit it and try again.
You can possibly find out the conflicting application bylooking
[root@cwa a]#

Does anyone have a clue for me?

Thanks

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#2 2009-12-24 16:32:33

R00KIE
Forum Fellow
From: Between a computer and a chair
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 4,734

Re: Recording with OSS4

Lets start with 'ossinfo -v' smile

Although I have to warn you that audacity does have a bug right now and doesn't play well with oss, it seems to be an upstream bug which they seem to be reluctant to fix. Check here http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=9178

At least for me it also causes audacity not being able to detect and allow the selection of any oss devices if no /etc/asound.conf is present. I didn't have the time and will to open a bug report (or new thread) yet and see what the audacity devs have to say.

If you recompile audacity with the patch in the thread you will regain the ability to record but the device selection will still be broken.

I can't say anything about ardour because I don't use it.


R00KIE
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#3 2009-12-29 05:01:38

Frabato
Member
Registered: 2007-10-24
Posts: 267

Re: Recording with OSS4

Hi Rookie,

Thanks very much for your reply. I can't give you the output of "ossinfo -v" because I'm now running vectorlinux with alsa. I miss some of the features of my beloved archlinux (which I've been using for two years) but there were some insurmountable problems regarding ntfs and broken stuff after upgrading. Yes, it seems that oss4 has issues with audacity but I have no desire to apply a patch that really doesn't fix all of the problems, it would be nice if the oss devs would just fix it, but of course I realize that all of this stuff is free and people can only give of their time according to circumstance, I still appreciate the work that they've done. Maybe I'll try again after another version or two. I'm a musician (composer) and my computer has an m-audio card that runs through a hafler amp and preamp and I can say for certain that (at least on my computer) oss4 has higher quality sound than alsa, however, the situation is the same on absolute linux, slackware and vector linux so, I'm back to using alsa (I also appreciate the alsa folks). Again, thanks for your reply and the link that you sent as it helped to verify that "it just simply doesn't work". All the best to you and the ever helpful archlinux community.

P.S.
You're very knowledgeable and well informed for a rookie!
And oh ya, Merry Christmas

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#4 2009-12-29 09:53:54

R00KIE
Forum Fellow
From: Between a computer and a chair
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 4,734

Re: Recording with OSS4

Well, the problem is not with ossv4, it works just fine with all other apps that are willing to play nice with it. From what I could see things have changed a bit with audacity a while back (they have changed something under the hood) and in the process it seems oss support got broken.

I think they may be trying to get audacity to play nice with pulse+alsa (which seems to be where everyone is going now) and they may look at the oss issue later.

With alsa maybe you could try not to use dmix and use pulse on top of alsa. This setup (assuming you fiddle a little with pulse's settings to make it use a better resampling algorithm) should in theory give you the same sound quality as ossv4. Trouble is, it seems that pulse had a few nasty problems not very long ago and not all programs are willing to play nice with pulse.

I think that for audio production people use jack, I saw references to it while trying to get my notebook to output clear sound, at the time I knew less than I know now and the setup seemed a little tricky. Even if using another distro now, take a look at the Arch wiki (and use google tongue ) to get an idea of the alternatives you have.

Best of luck trying to get your setup to get your setup to play nice, I know from personal experience that it can be frustrating but eventually you will find a good solution.

Oh and thanks for your compliment, I just try to know enough to keep my system going without too many hiccups smile


R00KIE
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#5 2009-12-31 15:46:31

Frabato
Member
Registered: 2007-10-24
Posts: 267

Re: Recording with OSS4

Hi Rookie,

Pulseaudio has had problems in the past with the ice1712 driver . I saw a workaround which was a major headache and it didn't work. I had to record something from a vhs machine and after having no success with audacity, aurdor or ossrecord I got around it by booting into windows and recording with cubase. This issue is not specific to audacity. I think that the problem in all cases has to do with this:

/dev/dsp: Device or resource busy

I don't have arts or esd so I can't imagine what could be getting in the way. Maybe someone knows of a command that I could run to find out what is using /dev/dsp.

Thanks again for the reply.

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#6 2009-12-31 22:39:54

R00KIE
Forum Fellow
From: Between a computer and a chair
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 4,734

Re: Recording with OSS4

That points to something already hijacking the recording source (and maybe vmix not being attached by default to the recording source)(ou can attach vmix to the sound output and input, which allows you to playback and record with multiple programs at the same time).
It should be attached automatically when oss started. The other possibility is that whatever you have hijacking the recording source is bypassing vmix (might also be some nasty problem with the code related with your card).

If something is using the recording source or the output then if you try to stop oss (/etc/rc.d/oss stop) the it will tell you what is using any of the oss devices.

If you want to see how oss does it then look inside the file /usr/sbin/soundoff or you can try 'fuser -v /dev/dsp'


R00KIE
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