I have seen only a few posts on this card, but I am “attempting” to get decent sounds quality out of a EMU1212m card and facing problems with Ardour. In short, I am running Ubuntu Studio 10.4 32 bit with the EMU1212m (really a EMU1010) clocked 44,100 (but tried 48K as well). The card is running isolated on its own IRQ (no ACPI) via the EMU10k1 driver. I am hoping to use this only for its S/PDIF input, but the ADA ports are working too.
In short, the card works reliably well with Superlooper, and other Jack apps. However, when I try to record with Ardour, I get a track or two down and start getting intermittent xruns every 30 seconds to 2 minutes. I have messed with latency/buffers, and those really do not improve this issue. I can get completely clean sound for a little while, then a few seconds of chop, and then clean again…rinse and repeat. Being that I can record a few tracks perfectly and only experience problems after a few tracks, I figure I must be hitting some limit in Ardour. DSP usage barely shows past single digits and buffers show headroom when this happens. Could this be Ardour is maxing out the bus or IO? Any ideas? Thanks for any feedback.
P.S. I am roughing out a how-to on settings this card up if any one else wants to suffer the abuse.
I had the same issue with video card and 1212m. Simply moving the mouse pointer around without clicking would cause hundreds of xruns. Changed the card and it works fine.
Regarding the 44.1 / 48 rates - you have to set the proper rate manually using alsamixer. it will not switch the rate automatically.
As mentioned - in 44.1 mode MIDI does not work. Messages are corrupted. MIDI is ok in 48k mode.
I could not make this card to synchronize to the external source (using yamaha 01v mixer as a master). Tried to set 01v to 44.1 and 48, no luck there. It appears to be synchronized, however there are hundreds of xruns. When set to master, it synchronizes ok with the mixer.
48k seems to work well with ADAT (multi channel input / 2 channel out). 1212m set to master for sync. 44.1 did not work well with ADAT for me. SPDIF works fine too.
I am able to record in ardour on all 12 channels (8 ADAT, 2 SPDIF, 2 analog). no issues there (using 01v as input).
For some reason multi out is messed up. some channels are summed up, and repeated. two channel out works fine.
I purchased the card a few months ago, and it actually works really well. I will be honest that I have not heard great things about Ubuntu Studio, and have tried older versions, but just not the latest one.
I have used the card with openSUSE 11.2, Puredyne, and AVLinux, all which work fabulously, except for one thing. I notice that you run at 44.1KHz. I have found that midi signals coming into the card from an external controller are ‘translated’ incorrectly at 44.1 KHz, so I use 48KHz exclusively for jack which works flawlessly with as many ardour channels as you need.
Also make sure that you are using the Multichannel Capture for the input device so that you get 24bit audio capture - the default input device on allows 16bit at the moment.
I have diagrammed how to set up the DSP settings on the card, as it can get really confusing. Let me know if you would like this info.
Thanks for the feedback. Lokki, you are right…it was my system after all, not Ardour.
In case it helps others, the primary culprit was an ATI Radeon video card:
First, I found that if I grabbed any open window while Ardour was playing, my system would stutter immediately and sometimes even crash out Jack. I replaced the ATI Radeon graphics card with an ancient NVIDEA card and the problem nearly disappeared right there. Lesson learned: I should know better than to buy ATI.
From there, I still had intermittent, albeit less frequent issues. Jumping to the conclusion, second issue was the off-brand NIC and its poor driver. After replacing the ATI graphics card and disabling the NIC when recording, I cut a 10ms latency in half and can run rock solid at 5.2ms ,even with this dinosaur EMU card.
Kim4mich, I love Ubuntu Studio 10.4 and have had fantastic luck. I literally just shoved in a cd into the drive of a blank system and was recording music in Ardour in 3 hours. Other than the cryptic dance to get the EMU 1212m working, I did not have to edit even a single config file or curse in vein at the MS loving vendor that does not support Linux this time (NOTE: Pulse on Ubuntu Studio defaults to 44,100. You have to edit a config if you wish to use a different clock).
In regards to the 44,100, I am recording solely via SPDIF and it seems that the EMU10K1 drivers does not translate between clocks very well. If I set the clock to 48,000, the SPIDF port no longer properly reads a 44,10 source. Have you had any luck finding a solution to the mixed clock translation on this card?
Any way, I a thrilled as can be to get this old proprietary card working at about 5ms. Thanks again for the feedback!
I have a laptop running Ubuntu Studio 10.4. I have an ATI radeon card but would rather not use the proprietary driver for it since it knocks out features in the computer (graphic programs are actually worse, and the sleep/hibernation is not functional). Is there a hit to the ardour performance if the ubuntu driver for the ati card is used in lieu of the ati proprietary driver. I haven’t noticed it but then again I haven’t pushed the machine that hard.
zaboomafoo, thanks for the very valuable feedback. Regarding 44,100 vs 48 K, I did indeed set the clock manually in the alsamixer and also adjusted pulse audio to 48K. Everything seemed to work in 48K with the exception of SPDIF coax. I tried two different SPIDIF coax devices and neither work at 48K, but both work perfectly at 41,100. If you are using ADAT, I suspect you are using optical. Theoretically, I could not expect optical vs coax to make a difference, but maybe it does in this driver. Any way, I just went out and bought a cheap usb midi breakout and record at 44,100. Oh, I have not tried multi-out, but did get 16 channels of multi-in working correctly. In the end, this is not perfect by any means, but has been rock solid in what does work. Thus, I am extremely happy to recycle and make use of this old card.
douglane: I really don’t know enough about the ATI card to comment. Though, if you can run Ardour AND move a window around at the same time, you are doing far better than I did with an ATI Raedon.
(NOTE: Pulse on Ubuntu Studio defaults to 44,100. You have to edit a config if you wish to use a different clock).