Sound tinkering

Ponder · Post by **Ponder** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 6:58 pm

Now I don't know if this is Oolite or the fact I've finally gone from OSS to ALSA but sound seems a bit choppy after today's rsync.

Has the sound code been tinkered with?

For example, the Witchspace Fuel Injector sound appears to loop following a quick decay to silence.

Post by **winston** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 10:50 pm

The sound code has not been changed for months. It's probably your setup - more specifically, since you're building from source (or using the nightly) rather than the autopackage, it's most likely due to having older SDL libraries (especially since you mentioned moving from OSS to ALSA - the mainstream was using ALSA almost three years ago).

If your distro is a bit old, and doesn't have recent SDL libraries, you can always download the latest SDL source and build it (then make sure that the dynamic linker finds the newest version first). You can always try the Autopackage first since this bundles up known good SDL libraries.

The SDL libraries supplied with distros circa Fedora Core 2 had sound 'choppiness' problems (various things like clicking noises, bad latency, broken up sounds). These went away as soon as SDL was updated to the latest version.

Ponder · Post by **Ponder** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 11:28 pm

Yeah, I did suspect it may be due to this.

I'll look into getting the latest SDL libs tomorrow, after all, this solved the Windows problem

* Edit: Couldn't wait. Swapped sdl-oss for sdl-alsa and installed a bunch of other alsa and sdl related stuff to no effect. Downloaded, built and installed latest sdl, no effect. Got latest dev autopackage, no effect.

BTW, my distro is Debian Sarge (3.1) Stable.

You mentioned making sure the dynamic linker finds the correct version, I'm at a loss to do this so can you point the way please?

Going to bed now, too tired to work on this any more

Post by **winston** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 8:40 am

Go into the oolite.app directory then

ldd oolite

This will tell you exactly what libraries it's trying to link to. It's quite possibly trying to link to the SDL libs that come with Sarge rather than the new ones you built. You can set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to change this (or modify /etc/ld.so.conf) and make sure /usr/local/lib (or wherever you put the newer library versions) is first. If you modify /etc/ld.so.conf you'll need to run ldconfig after doing so.

Ponder · Post by **Ponder** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 12:25 pm

Well it's definitely using the newer libs:

babylon5:/usr/lib/Oolite/oolite.app# ldd oolite
libGLU.so.1 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libGLU.so.1 (0x4002b000)
libGL.so.1 => /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 (0x400a6000)
libSDL-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libSDL-1.2.so.0 (0x4011f000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/libpthread.so.0 (0x401c5000)
libSDL_mixer-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libSDL_mixer-1.2.so.0 (0x401d4000)
libSDL_image-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libSDL_image-1.2.so.0 (0x40244000)
libgnustep-base.so.1.12 => not found
libobjc.so.1 => not found
libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/libm.so.6 (0x40260000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0x40282000)
libstdc++.so.5 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5 (0x403b7000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x40471000)
libGLcore.so.1 => /usr/lib/libGLcore.so.1 (0x4047a000)
libnvidia-tls.so.1 => /usr/lib/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.1 (0x40bcb000)
libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x40bce000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x40bdc000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/libdl.so.2 (0x40ca3000)
libasound.so.2 => /usr/lib/libasound.so.2 (0x40ca6000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
libvorbisfile.so.3 => /usr/lib/libvorbisfile.so.3 (0x40d59000)
libvorbis.so.0 => /usr/lib/libvorbis.so.0 (0x40d61000)
libogg.so.0 => /usr/lib/libogg.so.0 (0x40d89000)
libsmpeg-0.4.so.0 => /usr/lib/libsmpeg-0.4.so.0 (0x40d8e000)
libtiff.so.4 => /usr/lib/libtiff.so.4 (0x40de7000)
libjpeg.so.62 => /usr/lib/libjpeg.so.62 (0x40e37000)
libpng12.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 (0x40e55000)
libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0x40e7a000)

But sound is still weird. Restarted ALSA with no effect. Now I'm totally lost.

It's not spoiling my enjoyment of the game but it's something I'd like to get working properly

Post by **winston** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 1:21 pm

Well, switch back to OSS is really the only thing I can suggest. Have you checked that SDL is configured to use ALSA not OSS? (Otherwise it'll be using the OSS emulation in ALSA). There is a way to configure this at runtime, but I'm sorry - I've forgotten how it's done.

Ponder · Post by **Ponder** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 1:47 pm

ALSA has too many good points to go back to using OSS so I guess I'll live with it for now.

I've removed all traces of OSS from the installed packages and it's definitely got the ASLA Options installed. Really not sure which way to go now.

If anyone has any ideas please don't be afraid to mention them

Post by **winston** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 2:36 pm

Yes. Switch to Ubuntu. It's debian based, but much more up to date (and the laptop I use for testing oolite on runs Ubuntu; my main development system runs Fedora Core 5). IMHO, Debian is what you want to run on servers rather than desktops - but that's just IMHO.

Ponder · Post by **Ponder** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 5:55 pm

This is my server, that's why it's running Debian

Being a Sempron 2200+ with 80GB HD space and 1GB RAM is a bit of overkill though, and as I had a spare TFT monitor due to a new purchase I decided to use it as a workstation too.

eddyp · Post by **eddyp** » Thu May 04, 2006 4:03 pm

Could you try the "semi official" Debian packages?

eddyp · Post by **eddyp** » Thu May 04, 2006 4:14 pm

eddyp wrote:
Could you try the "semi official" Debian packages?

Oh, wait, you are running Debian Sarge, right?

I will have to backport the package, in that case.

Ponder · Post by **Ponder** » Thu May 04, 2006 6:05 pm

Yes, Sarge on a Sempron 2200+ (i686).

I won't hold my breath on a new release getting only the apt-list though, it's still on KDE 3.3.4

eddyp · Post by **eddyp** » Thu May 04, 2006 7:16 pm

Ponder wrote:
Yes, Sarge on a Sempron 2200+ (i686).

I won't hold my breath on a new release getting only the apt-list though, it's still on KDE 3.3.4

And it will stay like that. That is the Debian way of dealing with the stable releases.

I was talking about an unofficial package.

Ponder · Post by **Ponder** » Thu May 04, 2006 8:21 pm

I know, I'm prepared to put up with it because it's mainly a server, but I wish they'd at least make some progession with KDE, its datedness is causing many other compilation dependency problems.

eddyp · Post by **eddyp** » Thu May 04, 2006 9:11 pm

Ponder wrote:
I know, I'm prepared to put up with it

That's why I said I should backport the package