Bug Report: Ecasound goes silent

Bug report:

Symptoms:
No more sound is heard, but the engine still seems to be running (clock
is moving, engine-status is "running", seems to obey transport
commands).

Temporary solution:
cs-disconnect/cs-connect restores sound.

Triggers:
- Transport commands: fw/rw/setpos, occasionally start/stop
- On copp-set, especially multiple ones.
  (In nama terms, mostly on solo and mute/unmute, which means multiple
  copp-set on eadb ops)
- More rarely, it happens for no obvious reason while playing back.

Remarks:
- The more complex a chainsetup is, the more likely it is to happen.
- Th shorter the JACK period (-p) is, the more likely it is to happen.
- Nama manages to mitigate this problem by introducing a sleep period
  between operations, though this does not entirely eliminate the 
  problem.
  (e.g stop, sleep, fw, sleep, start)

Impact:
Usability is affected on complex chainsetups using the IAM or ECI.
Usability might also be affected on very large chainsetups in batch
mode. For a DAW like nama using ecasound as its backend, it means
rearming 1-5 times an hour on a modest project (5-10 tracks) while
mixing.

Software info:
- Ecasound 2.8.1 (also observed on 2.8.0)
- jackdmp version 1.9.7 (also observed on jackd1 0.118)
- JACK cmdline: "jackd -R -P65 -t1000 -dalsa -d hw:1,0 -r48000 -p128 -n3
                       -M -H -Xseq"
- kernel 2.6.33.7.2-rt30 SMP PREEMPT RT x86_64
- Debian Squeeze with some custom software

Case study:
I have put together a downloadable project for debugging purposes.
Thanks go to the packet-in band[1] for allowing me to use the material
from a song[2] I helped mix.
Link: http://wolfdream.ca/files/bugreport_smassy.tar.bz2
After untarring, you'll find in the bugreport_smassy directory:
- bugreport_smassy.ecs (The chainsetup)
- bugreport_smassy.log (A log of the bug being reproduced as described
  below)
- wav (A subdir with the audio material)
(NOTE: The audio material is flac compressed for convenience, so you
need to do:
$ cd wav;flac -d *flac;rm *flac;cd ..
...to make it ready for testing.)
(NOTE: The following ladspa plugins should be installed for the project
to work as expected: swh-plugins, tap-plugins,
invada-studio-plugins-ladspa, fil-plugins)

Reproducing the bug:
The simplest but by no means the only way to reproduce this bug is to
do (with jackd running):
$ ecasound -s bugreport_smassy.ecs -c
(In IAM)
> cs-connect
> setpos 10
> start
> fw 20

Please, let me know if I can be of any further assistance with this.

REFERENCES:
1. http://packet-in.org
2. http://packet-in.org/repo/RPM12/Marianas_Trench/attribution.txt

Cheers,
S.M.


-- 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Virtualization & Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning
Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing 
also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service.
http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/
_______________________________________________
Ecasound-list mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ecasound-list