Ticket #376 (Fixed)Sun Jan 12 22:16:38 UTC 2014

Sound Failure

Details by John Norris (2243):

There is currently a problem of some sort with Sound cutting out randomly on the Raspberry Pi, as reported in the discussion Forum by Alan Griffin on 19 Nov 2013 (No.2213) and by myself on 21 Dec (No.2243). Bell ringing programs written by us to generate and sound ringing changes on the BBC micro nearly thirty years ago, and subsequently adapted for RISC OS, have exhibited no evidence of intermittent sound failure in all that time, up to and including RISC OS 5.19 on the Pi.

However, at some point between OS version 5.19 (October 2012) and version 5.21 (8 July 2013) a bug appears to have crept in and both programs now suffer from intermittent sound failure. Typically the time to failure is about ten minutes but it can vary from almost instant up to a few hours. There is good reason to believe that it is not a sound buffer overflow problem. There are no error messages – the sound just stops while in other respects the program continues running. As
soon as the program is quit sound is restored.

Two test programs can be downloaded from www.jrnorris.co.uk/TestProgs.zip;
one suffers from sound failure, the other doesn’t.

VersionF is the standard version of Stringing, differing only from normal in having all the choices made in advance, for ease of use. Sound fails on this version, as described above. (The full range of options – though not the sound! – can be restored by removing all the “REM temp” lines).

VersionR is a reduced form of the standard version. Everything connected with the generation and sounding of the changes is unaltered but the graphics have been greatly simplified. As with version 1, all choices have been made in advance. There have been no sound failures on this version in over twenty four hours of running.

It would be much appreciated if the problem could be addressed, as both programs are now useless on the Pi and therefore will have no appeal to any young people experimenting with the Pi who happen to be bellringers.