Sound cuts out on Raspberry Pi

It’s games under ADFFS, I’ll drop you a mail as I believe I know what the issue is.

EDIT: The lack of in-game music is related to GraphicsV 1 (VSync), not the sound stack.

I just had SoundDMA hang during the boot sequence on the 20-01-14 alpha, so that problem is still there.

Thank you Doug, for your detailed instructions for loading the Beta version of Risc OS.
I followed it to the letter, and my Pi says I now have Vesion 5.21 (24-Jan-14).
Unfortunately, the sound is still cutting out on my ringing program, so we are back to the drawing board!

Does it regularly cut out? If we can find a way to reproduce, we should be able to get some debugging done. I’ve only managed to get it to cut out a few times a week

Yes. It cuts out every time I run my bellringing program, any time from a few seconds up to 20 minutes after running it.

Jon
Can I send you my program?
Where to?
Alan

I’ve now fixed the SoundDMA hang on startup, and I’m hoping I’ve fixed the sound cutting out too (When I left for work, John’s Stringing program had been running for about 7 hours without any issues). The fix should be in the latest development ROM, so if anyone who’s been having issues with their sound cutting out could give it a go then that would be great.

Chris mentioned it being the buffer being overfilled, why would the RO Channel Handler call the buffer fill code more than it needs too? It was my understanding that if your fill code is called, you add another N bytes to the buffer. N being the buffer length you’ve previously got from Sound_Configure.

We are talking about different buffers (I think). Using the SOUND command from BASIC places the item in a queue. Use the call SYS “Sound_QFree” first to check the sound buffer has some space before stuffing it. Otherwise it overfills, it is a circular buffer and so takes a while to sort itself out.

and I’m hoping I’ve fixed the sound cutting out too

I’ll try it.

I have reproduced the sound cutting out on the Raspberry Pi under RISC OS 5.21 (8-Jul-2013) by using this test programme

It works by flooding the system with SOUND a,b,c,d,e commands where e is the future time schedule for the sound. As downloaded it has been arranged so that the sound system is not overwhelmed and does not cut out. By making some alterations as follows, the sound system cuts out as it gets overfilled:
350 IF in%<25 THEN
580 IF in%<25 THEN
1140 DIM Start%(300), Finish%(300) , BellCode%(300)
1530 FOR i%=0 TO 299

It remembers the last 300 (vice 30) unplayed but scheduled sounds and displays the next 5 to be played in a !Help message from its icon bar icon, as it forgets a sound (when it is played) it adds another to its list and the schedule. After a while (in the amended version) sound cuts out. It is a bit of a hack, not having even a tidy ‘Quit’ option (only ALT-Break works).

I downloaded the latest Beta version this morning, and have run my program on it for three hours, and John Norris’s for six hours without the sound cutting out.
So I reckon that the fault has been cleared. I am so grateful. Thank you very much to Jeffrey Lee, and everyone else in the team who have worked so hard to correct this.

May I express my own appreciation to Jeffrey and all involved in sorting out the sound problem. I’m truly grateful. Very many thanks.

Thanks for resolving that issue Jeffrey, your tireless efforts on RISC OS are very much appreciated.

Clearly there is more than one type of cutting out. The sound buffer overflow which I refer to above is still happening (on the 5.21 (31-Jan-2014) ROM) because BASIC does not check whether the sound buffer has space in it before adding sound commands. The (circular?) buffer overflows and the pointer loses its way (as far as I can tell). Checking the sound buffer status (using Sound_QFree) seemed to sort this one out. However my recollection of this issue is from 2006…

I’m delighted the type of cutting out my ringing program (and Alan’s) was experiencing has been solved. I don’t understand the technicalities but I don’t think sound buffer overflow was involved. As I reported on 21 Dec, sound cutting out on my program was worst at low speed and ceased when it was rung flat out, under which condition approx. 250 sound commands per second were being issued.

This is brilliant. I’ve been running QTM all evening and not one cut-out. Great work Jeffrey, very pleased!

Steve

I have just started trying to get sound from a PandaBoard system, and have run into very similar problems to those in this topic. I am using DigitalCD as the app, and a few mp3s as the source. It plays for a few minutes, then there is a loudish click from the speakers and all sound then cuts out. Nothing I have tried gets any more sound out other than a reboot.

Current OS I am using is 5.21 (17 Mar 2014), and I think I have used the latest version of DigitalCD and its associated modules.

Is it just me, or have other users had problems with sound on the PandaBoard ES?

Appart from the fact that it is 48 kHz only and so almost not usable?