Re: [CLAM] Network Editor: Looks fine but no action/sound?

[Johan Ekenberg]

> Thanks for you interest in CLAM. We are currently on bugsquashing process 
> toward 1.0 so we are very interested on fixing this kind of bugs.

Great!

> > After successfully building/installing CLAM + NetworkEditor on Gentoo
> > Linux, 
> 
> Gentoo, a new platform to deal with :-) Maybe you could add the wiki some 
> comments on the packages you needed to get clam compiled and so on, 
> to help other Gentoo users.

Gentoo is a source based distribution. At the heart of Gentoo is the Portage package manager which uses the concept of ebuilds that contain all the information required to automatically build a piece of software from source. The ebuilds know about dependencies etc. Currently, there is no ebuild available for Clam. It's my intention to get Clam working, and then hopefully be able to write an ebuild for Gentoo. This will make installing the NetworkEditor as easy as "emerge clam-network-editor", and go have a coffee while the system automagically installs the software including any required depencies, everything compiled and optimized for your specific platform. 
 
> Important to know: svn, 0.98, compile options?

Downloaded the latest stable versions, the about-box says:

"Network Editor 0.4.4~svn09702, CLAM 0.99.0~svn09702"

Compiled according to instructions in INSTALL, ie
  scons install_prefix=/usr/local clam_prefix=/usr/local

Sorry to have left that out in the first place.

> > I launch NetworkEditor. It looks good, but I can't get anything 
> > really working. I've tried all the examples. NetworkEditor says it's
> > Playing through Jack. The connections in qjackctl look fine. Other
> > applications work with Jack. But NetworkEditor is completely silent and
> > doesn't appear to be doing anything. No error messages, no warnings, just
> > silence. Also Graphical Monitors like Vumeters or Oscilloscopes show no 
> > trace of any signal processing going on, regardless of trying to play the
> > supplied example-files, other audio files or receiving input from the
> > microphone.
> 
> It may be a bug we recently detected: the flow control doesn't cope with 
> certain audio system buffer sizes. It leads to some token passing deadlock 
> and the results are the same you are saying. But we are still caracterizing 
> the problem so, you can help us a lot if you send us the jack setup and the 
> jack startup log (some jack setup values are just hints and the log is more 
> informative).

I've tried several different jack setups:
  jackd -R -P71 -dalsa -dhw:0 -r48000 -p256 -n3
  jackd -R -P71 -dalsa -dhw:0 -r44100 -p256 -n5
  jackd -R -P71 -dalsa -dhw:0 -r44100 -p64 -n3
  jackd -R -P71 -dalsa -dhw:0 -r44100 -p64 -n5

Here are the relevant lines from qjackctl Messages window (is that what you mean by startup log?):

23:32:01.245 jackd -R -P71 -dalsa -dhw:0 -r48000 -p256 -n3
23:32:01.412 JACK was started with PID=7316 (0x1c94).
23:32:01.422 MIDI connection graph change.
jackd 0.102.20
JACK compiled with System V SHM support.
loading driver ..
apparent rate = 48000
creating alsa driver ... hw:0|hw:0|256|3|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
control device hw:0
configuring for 48000Hz, period = 256 frames, buffer = 3 periods
ALSA: final selected sample format for capture: 32bit little-endian
ALSA: use 3 periods for capture
ALSA: final selected sample format for playback: 32bit little-endian
ALSA: use 3 periods for playback

> > I also tried Alsa (shutting down Jack and restarting NetworkEditor), but no
> > luck there either.
> 
> Double check at the bottom right backend indicator that NetEditor is really 
> choosing Alsa and not JACK. Depending on JACK version it may have started 
> Jack by itself. If not it should have complaint about using a non Alsa 
> network in an Alsa setup, as Alsa still uses old MonoAudioFileReader/AudioOut 
> modules instead of AudioSource/AudioSink.

Oh yes, it's using Alsa alright. It did complain, and I tried several setups with audioout etc. I did a new test now and actually got some sound from the MonoAudioFileReader -> AudioOut with Alsa, but the sound is choppy and distorted almost beyond recognition. Very ugly. I tried several sound files including the two from example-data provided with the source. Tried both 44100 and 48000 sample rate in AudioOut but no difference.

> Well, just to confirm my suspects, If you are compiling from the source and 
> you don't mind adding some traces, could you send me the output of 
> NetworkEditor when unquoting the trace at 
> CLAM/src/Flow/Networks/PushFlowControl.cxx:67 ?
> 
> To know whether the jack callback is even called you can add a trace at
> CLAM/src/Flow/Networks/JACKNetworkPlayer.cxx:12

I'll try this and send a separate response asap.

> Hopefully, some discussion on this issue is going to happen this week on the 
> development list. I'll CC the interesting bits if you are not subscribed.

I've just subscribed.

Thank you!
/Johan