How to setup my staudio dsp24 c-port in jack?

Installation & Configuration Linux
#1

hi everybody,
it’s now 2 weeks, that i’m trying to get my Staudio dsp24 c-port working. first i tried it in kubuntu 8.10, then i read the posts in this forum and installed 64studio. but i can’t get my soundcard working with jack and that means no recording with ardour.

Besides the dsp24 i’ve got an onboard soundcard which is hw:0, the dsp24 should be hw:1, i think. but it has an outboard box, too… (perhaps hw:1,0 ice1712 multi?)

I tried several setups, but i can’t even get the playback working, not to mention the recording. For testing purposes I just tried to playback an *.ogg file in audacity.

Well… Is there anybody who’s got this soundcard working (i suppose so) and could give me some hints for the right settings?
by the way… jack can only connect to the server if i start it as a root, did i forget to setup anything in jack?

Thank you…

#2

works perfectly! why didn’t i post my problems some days earlier in this forum… :wink:
well, I think one should try it at least… g

#3

I set memlock to unlimited and the nice level to -19.

after 2 hours of trying to get some sound with envy24control, i thought i should take a look at the setup of audacity - well, after setting “ALSA Hoontech SoundTrack Audio DSP24: ICE1712 (multi)” as playback device i can finally hear some sound coming out of my pc! :slight_smile: Also the meters in the envy24control are working now.

As soon as I try to start jack, the sound’s gone. When i try to set the DSP24 as capture and playback device, jack doesn’t connect to the server anymore
-> ALSA: cannot set channel count to 2 for capture
ALSA: cannot configure capture channel
cannot load driver module alsa

when i use the oss driver instead of the alsa, jack does connect, but has lots of xruns, and theres no more sound from audacity.

#4

after you boot your PC, please report the output of

cat /proc/asound/cards

lsmod | grep ice1712

then, check whether you have the mixer app called envy24control, it should be part of the alsa-tools-gui package.
You will use this mixer app for your card (not the generic alsamixer or other GUI based on it).

Once you get that up and running, we can get further with jack. In the mean time, please report the output of

cat /etc/security/limits.conf

and the output from the terminal of the following command

id

#5

mmm … audacity is maybe not the best jack client to test your stuff with since it will only show its jack ports (in fact through PortAudio) when its transport is rolling … as soon as its transport is stopped, the jack ports disappear … a real PITA :smiley:

yeah, envy24control is not obvious at the beginning but once you get the hang of it, it is in fact quite useful.

You don’t need jack to test if your card is OK. The plain ALSA layer is OK. What you want to play around with are the DAC sliders (for analog outputs) and ADC sliders (for analog inputs). Then comes the hardware monitoring setting. If you set it up (is it called Digital Mix or something like that?), you can route some of the inputs directly to your monitoring channels (1/2 or 7/8 IIRC).

I owned a Delta1010LT 1.5 year ago and played around with it for about 2 weeks so my memory may fail a bit. Jack had no problem seeing all channels, and I could use it at low to high latencies, depending on my needs. So you control the hardware levels from envy24control, and the signal routing in jack, except for h/w monitoring that you can set up in envy24control.

#6

hi thorgal,
thanks for your fast response.

Here the outputs of the commands you asked me for:

cat /proc/asound/cards:
0 [Intel ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel
HDA Intel at 0xfa000000 irq 16
1 [DSP24 ]: ICE1712 - Hoontech SoundTrack Audio DSP24
Hoontech SoundTrack Audio DSP24 at 0xd000, irq 20

lsmod | grep ice1712:
snd_ice1712 71648 0
snd_ice17xx_ak4xxx 9088 1 snd_ice1712
snd_ak4xxx_adda 13824 2 snd_ice1712,snd_ice17xx_ak4xxx
snd_cs8427 14464 1 snd_ice1712
snd_ac97_codec 119768 1 snd_ice1712
snd_i2c 10880 2 snd_ice1712,snd_cs8427
snd_mpu401_uart 14080 1 snd_ice1712
snd_pcm 89096 4 snd_ice1712,snd_ac97_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
snd 72776 19 snd_ice1712,snd_ak4xxx_adda,snd_cs8427,snd_ac97_codec,snd_i2c,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_hwdep

limits.conf:

/etc/security/limits.conf

#Each line describes a limit for a user in the form:

#

#Where:
# can be:

- an user name

- a group name, with @group syntax

- the wildcard *, for default entry

- the wildcard %, can be also used with %group syntax,

for maxlogin limit

# can have the two values:

- “soft” for enforcing the soft limits

- “hard” for enforcing hard limits

# can be one of the following:

- core - limits the core file size (KB)

- data - max data size (KB)

- fsize - maximum filesize (KB)

- memlock - max locked-in-memory address space (KB)

- nofile - max number of open files

- rss - max resident set size (KB)

- stack - max stack size (KB)

- cpu - max CPU time (MIN)

- nproc - max number of processes

- as - address space limit

- maxlogins - max number of logins for this user

- maxsyslogins - max number of logins on the system

- priority - the priority to run user process with

- locks - max number of file locks the user can hold

- sigpending - max number of pending signals

- msgqueue - max memory used by POSIX message queues (bytes)

- nice - max nice priority allowed to raise to

- rtprio - max realtime priority

#

#* soft core 0
#* hard rss 10000
#@student hard nproc 20
#@faculty soft nproc 20
#@faculty hard nproc 50
#ftp hard nproc 0
#@student - maxlogins 4

@audio - rtprio 99
#@audio - memlock 250000
@audio - nice -10

End of file

and the output of “id”:
uid=1000(maximilian) gid=1000(maximilian) Gruppen=4(adm),6(disk),20(dialout),24(cdrom),25(floppy),29(audio),44(video),46(plugdev),102(scanner),108(netdev),111(powerdev),112(stb-admin),113(camera),1000(maximilian)

bye, max

#7

Hooray!! It is working :slight_smile:
I’ve chosen the alsa driver now, but set the number of channels, for both playback and capture to 0 (instead of 8 or 2) and then jack connected. Sound is perfect.
I’ll have to work on the latency a little bit but the sound is brilliant!:slight_smile: Ardour i’m coming :wink:
By the way: Is there a rule of thumb how to set the input/output latency?
Thank you very mouch, thorgal, for your help!!

Greetz, Max.

#8

by the way - recording in audacity works too, if i set the capture device ICE1712 (multi).

#9

I think i do understand envycontrol now, but I don’t understand JACK :wink:
Which driver do i have to use in JACK? As written before, the alsa driver as a setup option in jack doesn’t connect at all.
When i use the oss driver, i get a signal in ardour, but its completely fuzzy and with lots of dropouts (5 per second i guess) :wink: JACK is also counting high numbers of xruns (whatever this is :wink: and gives me countinously messages like this one:

delay of 11095.000 usecs exceeds estimated spare time of 11090.000; restart …

#10

you should use the ALSA backend in jack, not the oss. Because both your soundcards are detected by ALSA at boot time, you should be careful which device you pick up in the qjackctl setup window. You should use hw:1 because ALSA has indexed your ice1712 based card as card 1.

The very first time I built up my DAW, I did not see that and jack was picking up the onboard chip by default. I thought my delta card had problems … it’s a very basic mistake and you should ensure that it’s not your problem :slight_smile:

bye the way, I find it strange that you can use the OSS backend in jack … unless you have the OSS kernel driver loaded for one of your cards …

#11

OK, you should be all set for jack.

I would uncomment and set memlock to unlimited in /etc/security/limits.conf. I think I also set the nice level to -19 (I am not in front of my DAW at the moment):

@audio - rtprio 99
@audio - memlock unlimited
@audio - nice -10

any change in this file will require a log out / log in.

have you tried fiddling with envy24control (the mixer GUI for your card) ?
once you get some audio out of it, we can talk about jack. You can have a description of the mixer GUI here: http://alsa.opensrc.org/Envy24Control

#12

great! :slight_smile:

leave the stuff at 0 (default). You won’t need that unless you plan on running your setup on big stages :slight_smile:

I forgot that: I never ever had to fiddle with these parameters, only the card number (hw:1) and ticked the RT mode.

You may find this setting good:

  • sample rate 48kHz
  • number of periods per buffer : 2
  • number of frames per period : 256
  • jack RT prio: 70
  • RT mode ticked.
    nothing else.
#13

My Hoontech dsp24 envy chip card works with the new Ubuntu Studio 9.04. I tried the new Mandriva 9.1, but could not get sound. The one problem with ubuntu studio is that it crashes when you install open office.

#14

Hi there, i reopen this discussion after years because i just got a dsp2000 audio card.

Sorry for the dumb question, but i don’t know how to connect my audio monitors to the card.

1st try: I’ve tried connect em to the classical mini-jack line out of the PCI card, my output in audacity is “Hoontech SoundTrack Audio DSP24: ice1712 consumer (DS)” i can hear audio via audacity (alsa driven), but i cannot see peaks on envy24 and i have no sound from headphones.

2nd try: always connected to the mini-jack line out i’ve choosen “Hoontech SoundTrack Audio DSP24: ice1712 multi” on audacity output settings, i can see peaks on env24, no sound coming from my pc, but headphones are working.

I really don’t think i have to connect my audio monitors to that mini-jack exit, but i don’t know where else i could connect em.

#15

… long time closed, I know but I didn´t find anywhere else to post this:

I really like this device, been fiddeling with it for years, mic amps a little weak.

Just wanted to let you know: I made myself a new 4meter h-port cabel d-sub hd 44 pin male connectors, connection straight 1 to 1. I used two 25 strand printer cables because I couldn´t get a 50. It works OK. I thought the length would be a problem but so far: no. Taking two 25er cables is an advantage because they are far more flexible and don´t put so much stress on the connectors.