On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 15:28:59 +0000
Post by Matt SavigearHi,
Despite various hints on the web to the contrary, it seems my
researches cannot come up with any way of getting my Tascam-428 USB
unit to use all four inputs under jack simultaneously (despite use
of the hw:1,2 rawusb device). Before I keep slogging on I have a
Does anybody on-list have a fully functioning Tascam US-428
including the use of all four inputs?
I have no US-428 here. My experience only deals with US-224 (only 2
input channels). The answer that I can forward is that the C+D
input/capture channels of the US-428 are only available thru the
"rawusb" device (hw:N,2). Nothing else. On its turn, this "rawusb"
subdevice is only available if you load snd-usb-usx2y with nrpacks=1.
I assume you have that right already. A also assume that you have your
jackd running on this hw:N,2 interface and you're probably seeing four
capture ports under alsa_pcm. Is that right? If so, make sure you have
us428control running and actually working. Test and tweak the faders,
taking special care with INPUT MONITOR mode which can help in your
findings. Do you probe any signal thru all and each of the (4)
channels? Or only on the first two?
In any case, please be prepared to have extensive reports ready to
alsa-devel maillist -- and yes, some more procedural and systematic
details are certainly mandatory on asking for help there ;)
Thanks for your reply. Yep, I tried a few questions but didn't get much
back so I thought I'd get a general idea of what people had before
pestering the list too much.
Here's where I am at...
I am using a 2.6.20 pre-emptible gentoo kernel on AMD64.
Jack is version 0.102.20, alsa-firmware is 1.0.14-rc2.
I am launching snd-usb-usx2y with nrpacks=1
I am using pam to get realtime privileges.
If I run jackd with realtime against hw:1 and the default input and
output settings, I get a fully functional duplex recording setup using
inputs A and B only. As expected, C and D are not seen due to the fact
the visible device only has two. This is OK, but my band has four
musicians and I already own a US-122...
I think I have us428control running OK (it certainly is running at
least). How can I test the functionality of the faders and so on? They
currently aren't directly connected to anything in software that I'm
aware of. I have a US-428/Controls source in the MIDI section of
qjackctl's connection dialog, but none of my sliders "select" or "mute"
buttons do anything. The transport controls illuminate but don't
actually do anything to the transport (I was ignoring the control
surface thing until I got the recording basics working).
The transport controls are effective but you have to setup a proper MMC
closed-loop with Ardour, for instance. Make sure you connect
US-428:Controls to ardour:seq and vice-versa. Then you'll have your
control surface alright ;)
Ah, the REC, MUTE, and SOLO fader-channel switches are only effective
with this last week's us428control incarnation, which are on alsa-tools
HG tree already. You'll have to wait for next alsa-tools release -- or
you can use the latest standalone tarball as found here:
http://www.rncbc.org/usx2y/us428control-0.4.6-2.tar.gz
If I run jackd directly against hw:1,2 I get...
jackd 0.102.20
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
jackd comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details
JACK compiled with System V SHM support.
loading driver ..
Enhanced3DNow! detected
SSE2 detected
creating alsa driver ...
hw:1,2|hw:1,2|1024|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit control device
hw:1 ALSA/USX2Y: Cannot open hwdep device "hw:1,1"
There's your trouble. It doesn't seem to be able on getting the "rawusb"
device complex in shape; although the numbering looks misleading it's
actually right: hw:1,1 is supposed to work on behalf of hw:1,2 as a
hwdep, in alsa driver parlance;) but does not have a pleasant response
to the jackd backend.
You're back to scratch: check that your snd-usb-usx2y is actually loaded
with nrpacks=1 parameter setting and check whether there's actually the
proper hwdep device up and running. Did you select hw:1,2 from qjackctl
drop-down menu or you just stuffed it on the entry field box? If hw:1,2
is not listed on that menu (the one shown by the [>] button) you don't
have your snd-usb-usx2y module properly setup, that's for sure. But you
tell me :)
Good checks are:
# cat /proc/asound/cards
# cat /proc/asound/devices
# cat /proc/asound/pcm
actually, this last one should show something like the following TWO lines:
01-00: US-X2Y Audio : US-X2Y Audio #0 : playback 1 : capture 1
01-02: US-X2Y hwdep Audio : US-X2Y hwdep Audio : playback 1 : capture 1
but this is only reading from my US-224 knowledge. YMMV :/
ALSA: Cannot open PCM device alsa_pcm for playback. Falling back to
capture-only mode cannot load driver module alsa
no message buffer overruns
Now, I have attempted to run jack using alternative devices such as
forcing hw:1,2 for input but hw:1,0 for output and other similar
combinations, but these have so far all resulted in segfaults in either
jack or ardour as soon as I try to connect the input to a track.
It is possible (nay, likely) that I have merely done something stupid
or overlooked a simple setting, but I'm not too close to the subject to
see it. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers.
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
***@rncbc.org