Announce: WaveInput for Linux

[Veggen]

Finally got things working.
I found a setting to disable the internal soundcard in the computers BIOS.
After reboot ALSA reports only the Soundblaster card, now on hw:0,0.

wavin:hw:0,0 plays music, but it is choppy and stops for rebuffering every now and then.
However wavin:default works fine, with no choppiness or rebuffering at all. I can hear some distortion sometimes, will try to track it down, maybe it is the 48000 to 44100 resampling?

At least I can now play Spotify streams on the SB and Transporter.
Thanks a lot bpa for helping me along.

[bpa]

Try using ecasound as it is better at buffer handling and may stop the rebuffering if audio h/w is the issue.

Otherwise it is possible to increase the buffer of audio from plugin to SC but this increases delay.

[Veggen]

I do not think it is a buffering problem.
As mentioned, the wavin:default stream has no choppiness or rebuffering at all.

The distortion I notice sounds more like a clipping issue.

Will look into ecasound.

Edit:
Installed ecasound and renamed the custom-convert.conf.eca file. Seems to work just fine, but I do get a message like this every few minutes:
[root@localhost vegar]# (audioio-raw) Outputting to standard output [rw].
WARNING: ALSA recording overrun, some audio samples were lost! Break was at least 5.45 ms long.
Still hear the distortion though.

Edit 2:
I suspect the distortion is connected to mixer levels. If I reduce the Capture level below 40 the distortion seem to disappear.

[trixpan]

very nice plugin! I had to use the snd-aloop method but it worked fine.

Now... Does any one have an idea on how to pipe a 5.1 audio stream from a movie to the squeezebox using this plug-in?

I would be happy to get rid of the long toslink cable that I use to connect my HTPC sound card to the receiver where the SB3 is connected.

[bpa]

Good news.
SC takes a PCM feed so it is up to you whatever is in the PCM stream. The encoding into Flac will not alter the stream - so you just need to make sure you have an appropriate receiver attached to the digital out of the player and playere is playing the Flac/PCM stream.

Bad news.
Video and audio will be out of sync due to delays as a result of network transmission and buffering.

[frisk]

Hi all, hope someone can help me.

I am trying to use the waveinput plugin to stream spotify music to my squeezebox but I have some difficulties to get it to work.

System: Linux box with Ubuntu, spotify run through wine.

I am a newbie with sound under linux so bear with me for any misunderstandings.

After much fiddling with alsamixer and the likes I still had mayor difficulty in getting hold of the audio stream, mainly because (I think) I can see no mixer device. I then pursued the use of the loopback device.

This is what I did: I put this in a .asoundrc file
pcm.!default {
type hw
card 1
device 0
}
and then something like (I have omitted a number of small options)
ecasound -i:alsahw,1,1 -o file.wav
captured the audiostream just fine. I then thought I was onto a solution that would perhaps work. I ensured the use of the settings in custom-convert.conf.eca and put wavin:hw:1,1 in my Favourites folder.

However, I get no sound from my squeezebox. Now I am at a loss, where should I start to debug this (or perhaps, how should I go

Thankful for any help,

regards
Erik

[bpa]

What version of Ubuntu are you running ? Some version of Ubuntu have PulseAudio installed by default and ALSA is emulated.

Are you running PulseAudio ?

[frisk]

I am running Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy I think it is called). I think pulseaudio (which I do not really know what it is) is running, at least there are pulseaudio processes running.

[bpa]

If pulse is running then I think you will need to investigate how pulse is setup.

Also there are special pulse & audio groups that the user running arecord/ecasound must belong.

Have you read posts 40 onward in this thread. Post 40 begins

I'm mainly trying to play sounds from an application called Spotify which I run through wine.

[frisk]

I have read the previous posts concerning pulseaudio and as far as I can tell I have followed their suggestions, i.e. added users to groups etc. But I haven't manage to get sound out of the plugin just yet.

Pulseaudio is a little mystery to me so I do not really know how to check its setup. I have started the pulseaudio manager and can see that it is running and there are volume controls etc.

Any suggestions on how to debug this situation are welcome.


Thanks for your help,
/Erik