Help with BruteFIR configuration

Crumboo · 2013-01-18 11:03 pm

Hi,

I am having some problems building a PC-based crossover based on Brutefir and wish that someone could help me out.

I am using a Intel Atom mini ITX board and have installed Voyage MPD linux distribution and Brutefir on a USB-stick in accordance with this document: http://www.acourate.com/freedownload/The%20Guide%20to%20VoyageMPD%20BruteFIR%20and%20JACK%20v1.6.pdf.

As soundcard I am using the USBStreamer USBStreamer | miniDSP from miniDSP. The card is based on a XMOS chip and works as a USB audio class 2.0 device, which should be supported by Voyage (with built-in drivers). The card has 10 channels I/O (8 ch I2S and 2 ch toslink).

When starting Brutefir I get the following error:

Code:

ALSA I/O: Could not set audio input parameters for "hw":
  Failed to set channel count to 10: Invalid argument.
Failed to init input device.
Failed to initialise digital audio interfaces.

So I guess I have to do something to get the sound card to work correctly. In Brutefir, the I/O section in the configuration file looks like this:

Code:

## INPUT ##
input "left_in", "right_in" {
device: "alsa" { device: "hw";};  };
sample: "S16_LE";
channels: 10/8,9;
};

## OUTPUT ##
output "left_out", "right_out" {
device: "alsa" { device: "hw";}; };
sample: "S16_LE";
channels: 10/8,9;
delay: 0,0;
};

Do I have to do any more configurations in order to get the sound card to work in Brutefir? I am completely new to Linux and quite lost here, so I really would appreciate some help with this configuration!

Best regards,

Mattias

madtecchy · 2013-01-18 11:53 pm

Hi Mattias..
I just had a quick look around the web and found this .. mabe it will be of some help..

http://www.acourate.com/freedownload/The%20Guide%20to%20VoyageMPD%20BruteFIR%20and%20JACK%20v1.6.pdf

Crumboo · 2013-01-19 10:52 am

Thanks, but that is the document I referred to above as a guide for installing VoyageMPD and Brutefir. But for the actual soundcard configuration in Brutefir I'm quiet lost. Maybe some configuration file is needed?

skyunlimited · 2013-01-19 5:27 pm

Hello crumbo,

do you have ane experience with Linux or brutefir?

Otherwise i would recommend to start with an eassier Distro (with xserver) you could return to voyage after you got brutefir running.

My suggestion is Ubuntu 10.04 a liveCD i created in 2011.

A simple 2 way crossover should nearly run out of the box (most times usb cards are"hw:1" or something like that.)

I dont know the usb streamer, so at first you must check if linux supports 10 in´s and 10 out´s .

You can get the cd here, try to install it on a usb stick it needs only 1.4 gb.

Netload Serious Filehosting - Netload

Password is: hifi, user is: hifi; if you install it keep both of them.

Regards

phofman · 2013-01-19 7:07 pm

Crumboo said:

Code:

ALSA I/O: Could not set audio input parameters for "hw":
  Failed to set channel count to 10: Invalid argument.
Failed to init input device.
Failed to initialise digital audio interfaces.

Your hw (i.e. hw:0,0) device does not have 10 channels. Take a look at aplay -l (you can put the listing here), or use the parameter --dump-hw-params of newer aplay versions git.alsa-project.org Git - alsa-utils.git/blob - aplay/aplay.1

Crumboo · 2013-01-21 6:09 pm

Hi and thank you for your answers. No, I don't have any experience with Linux or Brutefir I'm afraid... maybe it would be better to try another distro as skyunlimited suggested.

Anyways, here is what I get when typing aplay -l:

Code:

root@voyage:~# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 1: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC662 rev1 Analog [ALC662 rev1 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC662 rev1 Digital [ALC662 rev1 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

The listed devices is the card built in the motherboard and the USB card isn't listed here. When I unplug the USB card and plug it in again I get the following:

Code:

[82786.942036] usb 1-5: new high-speed USB device number 6 using ehci_hcd
[82787.071186] usb 1-5: New USB device found, idVendor=2752, idProduct=0016
[82787.086003] usb 1-5: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[82787.101001] usb 1-5: Product: USBStreamer
[82787.115857] usb 1-5: Manufacturer: miniDSP
[82787.130677] usb 1-5: SerialNumber: 0000
[82788.059947] usbaudio: unit 51: unexpected type 0x09
[82788.074690] snd-usb-audio: probe of 1-5:1.0 failed with error -5

Any suggestions?

phofman · 2013-01-21 8:38 pm

The dmesg output clearly shows the module (driver) snd-usb-audio failed for your dac. Google search for the error message usbaudio unit unexpected type 0x09 - Hledat Googlem reveals your usb device advertises some extended mixer features the existing driver has not implemented yet and fails.

Advanced Linux Sound System development

One of the suggestions is to use the original XMOS firmware. Perhaps that one did not implement any of the fancy features. Is that an option for your miniDSP? Apparently the firmware can be upgraded Forum | miniDSP . Perhaps using older firmware would help. You can always ask on minidsp forums, I assume they should have tested linux by now.

Crumboo · 2013-01-23 2:23 pm

Thank you, I posted on the miniDSP forum and hope someone can help me there. I've heard that others have been able to run the USBStreamer on Linux before...

phofman · 2013-01-23 2:33 pm

Crumboo said:
I've heard that others have been able to run the USBStreamer on Linux before...

That is why I talked about the upgrade/downgrade of USBStreamer firmware. It is possible the older firmware did not define the extended mixer features.

Crumboo · 2013-01-24 7:46 am

I'm not sure that there any upgrades/downgrades of the firmware for USBStreamer. It seems to me that the link you posted was about another miniDSP product.

Are there possibly any settings/configurations in ALSA that can be set to ignore? I found something in this thread that may be of use, but I can't find the the file "customdefines.h" anywhere in my system...

phofman · 2013-01-24 9:14 am

Crumboo said:
I'm not sure that there any upgrades/downgrades of the firmware for USBStreamer. It seems to me that the link you posted was about another miniDSP product.

Their forum seemed active, I am sure author of the device would be willing to help.

Are there possibly any settings/configurations in ALSA that can be set to ignore? I found something in this thread that may be of use, but I can't find the the file "customdefines.h" anywhere in my system...

I do not think there is any alsa setting to help you. I am afraid you will need to recompile the alsa driver with the mixer handling part commented out.

OTOH it is not so complicated. First I would try the latest alsa driver, using takashi's tree and building script Compilation procedure from git/tiwai/sound-2.6.git . If it does not help, modify the corresponding file and re-build the driver.

volume knob · 2013-02-22 12:05 am

Crumboo said:
The listed devices is the card built in the motherboard and the USB card isn't listed here. When I unplug the USB card and plug it in again I get the following:

Code:

[82786.942036] usb 1-5: new high-speed USB device number 6 using ehci_hcd [82787.071186] usb 1-5: New USB device found, idVendor=2752, idProduct=0016 [82787.086003] usb 1-5: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [82787.101001] usb 1-5: Product: USBStreamer [82787.115857] usb 1-5: Manufacturer: miniDSP [82787.130677] usb 1-5: SerialNumber: 0000 [82788.059947] usbaudio: unit 51: unexpected type 0x09 [82788.074690] snd-usb-audio: probe of 1-5:1.0 failed with error -5

Any suggestions?

HI, do you have a /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf file? if so could you open it and print it here, it could be that your soundcard is on a black list

phofman · 2013-02-22 7:36 am

You can blacklist modules, not individual soundcards supported by the module. The snd-usb-audio module is clearly loaded, it just does not understand a specific format it gets from the usb device and refuses to continue. Either upgrading to newer snd-usb-audio or "convincing" the device not to send such data is the way to go.

Crumboo · 2013-02-22 12:23 pm

Hi and thanks again for the advice. It doesn't seem to be possible to change the firmware of the card and the manufacturer isn't relly helpful either (there is no official support for linux). So for now I run it on windows instead and will maybe give it another go on linux in the future. Unfortunately I can't find any other interface that supports multichannel bidirectional (in and out) I2S-USB conversion out there...

phofman · 2013-03-19 4:58 pm

My 2 cents the bugfix for the new miniDSP firmware using unknown unit type is coming soon

[alsa-devel] [PATCH] ALSA: usb: Parse UAC2 extension unit like for UAC1

mwyss · 2013-10-21 10:13 am

Any news?

Hi

Does the minidsp usbStreamer work now with brutefir?

Any link to a project?

Rgs
Martin

jplesset · 2013-10-21 5:57 pm

I'm coming to your conversation a little late, but I had exactly the same error message implementing MPD/ ALSA, etc on Ubuntu on a PC. The problem was that the INPUT to the sound card had a different number of channels than the device name I was using for the sound card. I was sending 4 channels to a 5.1 sound card. Once I set Alsa to send 4 channels to a 4.0 sound card device, all worked well, or 6 channels to the 5.1 sound card device....

If you like, check my post #2 here: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pc-based/243420-xover-software-async-dsp-sync-pc.html

mickelob · 2014-02-24 7:45 pm

Hi Mattias, just found this thread some days ago. It think it is an excellent idea, I have exactly the same..! Could you figure it out how to map the channels? I have the MiniStreamer and 2*4 MiniDSP-kits that I will try to do a "proof of concept" with before I buy the USBStreamer and the 8*8 MiniDSP. Rgs Mikael

Help with BruteFIR configuration

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