2.4.3+ sound distortion

Hi,

I've never posted here before, so if i do anything wrong, just let me know.

I have a problem with kernels higher than 2.4.2, the sound distorts when playing a song with xmms while the seti@home client runs. 2.4.2 did not have this problem. I tried 2.4.3, 2.4.4-pre5 and 2.4.3-ac11. They al showed the same problem.

This is my hardware:
AMD Duron 600@800 (6x133)
MSI K7T Turbo-R
320MB PC133
ASUS v6800 Geforce 1 DDR
Creative PCI128

victor@victor:~$ gcc -v
Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-linux/2.95.3/specs
gcc version 2.95.3 20010219 (prerelease)

victor@victor:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo 
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 6
model           : 3
model name      : AMD Duron(tm) Processor
stepping        : 0
cpu MHz         : 796.830
cache size      : 64 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov 
pat pse36 mmx fxsr syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips        : 1589.24

victor@victor:~$ cat /proc/pci     
PCI devices found:
  Bus  0, device   0, function  0:
    Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133] (rev 3).
      Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xc0000000 [0xcfffffff].
  Bus  0, device   1, function  0:
    PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133 AGP] (rev 0).
      Master Capable.  No bursts.  Min Gnt=12.
  Bus  0, device   7, function  0:
    ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 64).
  Bus  0, device   7, function  1:
    IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. Bus Master IDE (rev 6).
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.  
      I/O at 0xc000 [0xc00f].
  Bus  0, device   7, function  4:
    Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 64).
  Bus  0, device  10, function  0:
    Ethernet controller: Winbond Electronics Corp W89C940 (rev 11).
      IRQ 10.
      I/O at 0xcc00 [0xcc1f].
  Bus  0, device  13, function  0:
    Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq ES1371 [AudioPCI-97] (rev 6).
      IRQ 11.
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.  Min Gnt=12.Max Lat=128.
      I/O at 0xd000 [0xd03f].
  Bus  0, device  15, function  0:
    RAID bus controller: Promise Technology, Inc. 20265 (rev 2).
      IRQ 11.
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.  
      I/O at 0xd400 [0xd407].
      I/O at 0xd800 [0xd803].
      I/O at 0xdc00 [0xdc07].
      I/O at 0xe000 [0xe003].
      I/O at 0xe400 [0xe43f].
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xdb000000 [0xdb01ffff].
  Bus  1, device   0, function  0:
    VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 256 DDR (rev 16).
      IRQ 9.
      Master Capable.  Latency=248.  Min Gnt=5.Max Lat=1.
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xd8000000 [0xd8ffffff].
      Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xd0000000 [0xd7ffffff].

If i need to suply more information please let me know. If you respond please put my emailadres in the CC, i am not a member of this mailing-list.

Victor Julien

Try running xmms as root with the "Use realtime priority when available" option checked. If the distortion is because xmms isn't getting enough CPU time, then running it at a realtime priority will fix it.

Nigel Gamble [email protected]
Mountain View, CA, USA. http://www.nrg.org/

MontaVista Software [email protected]

That did not help. The distortion is no stuttering, but noise in the music. It's not specific to xmms, freeamp and xine also have the noise. The noise reminds me of years ago when my father used a electric shaver witch gave noise in the sound of my radio. Maybe that can give you an idea about the sort of noise.

The changelog of 2.4.3 said that there were via-chipset-fixes undone, could this be a problem of my chipset?

Victor Julien

Please enter my email-adress in the CC.

Possible. Another thing to check is if you started using an APM monitoring program, like the GNOME battery_applet which reads /proc/apm every couple of seconds. With every read of /proc/apm the APM driver calls the APM BIOS, which on some systems runs quite long with interrupts disabled. On my laptop this results in exactly the noise you described.

Erik

J.A.K. (Erik) Mouw, Information and Communication Theory Group, Department
of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology and Systems,
Delft University of Technology, PO BOX 5031,  2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands
Phone: +31-15-2783635  Fax: +31-15-2781843  Email: [email protected]
WWW: http://www-ict.its.tudelft.nl/~erik/

I don't use APM monitors. The noise is more frequent than once every few seconds. I've tried to reproduce the noise using cpu-intensive programs other than seti@home and i failed. I tried compiling a kernel together with heavy calculations in The Gimp, but it didn't produce the noise. Could it be a problem only triggerd by seti? Is there something special about seti?

Victor Julien

Please enter my email-adress in the CC.

I've done some further testing and i discoverd that the problem was introduced in 2.4.3-pre3. Pre1 en pre2 are fine. I've tried disabling the via-ide-driver, i386 instead of athlon as build architecture with no effect. I've tried disabling my network-card with no effect. Ik tried reproducing the problem in the console using setiathome and mpg123 and i was succesfull.

So, i guess the problem is in 2.4.3-pre3 and later. I'm not a coder so there is not much i can do i think. If you need any information please let me know.

Victor Julien

Please put my email adress in the CC when you reply.

The 2.4.3->2.4.3-ac kernels include workarounds for the VIA chipset corruption reports. It is possible these have an impact, paticularly if the programs are making heavy use of X11.

Can you describe the 'distortion' better - clicking, bits repeated ?

The distortion is noise in the music. The music does not stutter or stop. It's a high-toned noise in the music. It's not there every second, but on average 30 seconds in every minute. It seems to be dependand on the kind of calcultions seti is making.

The noise seems to have nothing to do with X11, because in console mode running the seti client and mpg123, results in exactly the same noiselevel as in X11.

I've tried 2.4.3-pre{3,4,6}, 2.4.3, 2.4.4-pre5 and 2.4.3-ac11, they al have the problem. Only 2.4.3-pre{1,2} did not. 2.4.2 has also no problems.

Victor Julien

Please put my email-adres in CC, when responding.

I noticed that X11 became teribly slow on screen updates using 2.4.3-ac11 on an asus a7v133 (via686b).
Before that I ran an a7v (via686a): using ac6 worked
fine with X. X on ac9 also works fine, at least I did not notice any slowdown. Unfortunately cannot test ac11 on the a7v anymore...

I thought ac9 does include the via workarounds. Is there a significant diff between ac9 and ac11, or between via686a and 686b to cause this?

-Marcel

     ======--------         Marcel J.E. Mol                MESA Consulting B.V.
    =======---------        ph. +31-(0)6-54724868          P.O. Box 112
    =======---------        [email protected]                 2630 AC  Nootdorp
__==== www.mesa.nl ---____U_n_i_x______I_n_t_e_r_n_e_t____ The Netherlands ____
 They couldn't think of a number, so they gave me a name!
                                -- Rupert Hine       http://www.ruperthine.com/

We are still playing with the VIA fixups, but this may also be VM related. I'm currently playing with several VM ideas, and potential fixes which might impact overall performance.

Test 2.4.4pre6 that has the VIA fixes but does not have the VM changes

Would this be the same issue as describe in these threads:

http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0104.0/0233.html
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0104.1/0231.html

That is, the change in how nice is recalculated.

mrc

       Mike Castle       Life is like a clock:  You can work constantly
  [email protected]  and be right all the time, or not work at all
www.netcom.com/~dalgoda/ and be right at least twice a day.  -- mrc
    We are all of us living in the shadow of Manhattan.  -- Watchmen

I have noticed a problem with sound lately. I have a cs46xx card and
it randomly gets distorted. Normally I just reboot but on this last occurence I simply left it as it was. The distortion sounds someone punched the speaker core, it's tinny and mangled. Today it fixed itself out of the blue in the middle of playing a sound. All sound programs are equally affected.

It's only done this in the 2.4 series, I haven't had the desire to look into it.

David