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[SOLVED] USB sound card noise problems

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meetro
Posts: 7
Joined: 13 Jun 2012, 17:33

[SOLVED] USB sound card noise problems

Post by meetro »

Hi guys,

I have just bought USB sound card for my B3 - Creative BlasterPlay! but the output quality of the played mp3s is really low with a lot of background noises. The speakers and the sound card are working fine on a different machine runing Ubuntu.

So, the configuration is as follows:

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lsusb
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 041e:30d3 Creative Technology, Ltd Sound Blaster Play!
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 05e3:0608 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

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cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [U0x41e0x30d3   ]: USB-Audio - USB Device 0x41e:0x30d3
                      USB Device 0x41e:0x30d3 at usb-orion-ehci.0-1.1, full speed

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aptitude -r install alsa-utils

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adduser xyz audio

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aplay some-music.mp3
Playing raw data 'some-music.mp3' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono

I searched through the forums but I was not able to find the root of the problem. Any suggestions?
Last edited by meetro on 20 Jun 2012, 07:12, edited 1 time in total.
6feet5
Posts: 269
Joined: 13 Apr 2007, 17:32
Location: Gnesta, Sweden
Contact:

Re: USB sound card noise problems

Post by 6feet5 »

meetro wrote:Playing raw data 'some-music.mp3' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono
Have you tried a different player?

/Johan
meetro
Posts: 7
Joined: 13 Jun 2012, 17:33

Re: USB sound card noise problems

Post by meetro »

Thanks for replying.

Yes, I have experienced the noise problems running different mp3s and running the vlc player as well. I noticed that there is an option in aplay to set explicitly the encoding parameters, but there was no difference on the output sound quality.

I have also followed the steps described here: http://wiki.excito.org/wiki/index.php/T ... Squeezebox , i.e. I install the drivers without Squeezebox, but the problem still remains.

It looks that there is a problem with the drivers in the latest distro of Linux (available at June 2012).

Any other suggestions? I suppose that I should get feedback from the excito developers, because according to the upper-mentioned how-to, this sound card should work flawlessly.
meetro
Posts: 7
Joined: 13 Jun 2012, 17:33

Re: USB sound card noise problems

Post by meetro »

I have also noticed that there is an error in this tutorial: http://wiki.excito.org/wiki/index.php/T ... Squeezebox
Fixed! (Guide was b2 only, added a comment with replaceing ppc for armel for B3, thanks!)

Edit: My deep apologies, pressed "edit" instead of "quote" and edited your original post. Anyway, issue fixed.
johannes
Posts: 1470
Joined: 31 Dec 2006, 07:12
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: USB sound card noise problems

Post by johannes »

Can you explain the character of the noise? Is it constant (i.e. also when music is mute)? Or does it sound as decoding issues?
/Johannes (Excito co-founder a long time ago, but now I'm just Johannes)
meetro
Posts: 7
Joined: 13 Jun 2012, 17:33

Re: USB sound card noise problems

Post by meetro »

The noise is a kind of high-frequency sound and it changes accordingly with the melody of the song. I have tried with different media formats (avi, mp3, wav) and different players (even with squeezeslave) but the problem still remain.

If it is necessary, I can dump the output of any requested files or provide any other information.
johannes
Posts: 1470
Joined: 31 Dec 2006, 07:12
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: USB sound card noise problems

Post by johannes »

Ah, sounds as decoding issues then. Could be a general problem since our processor does not have floating point support, which might cause them to behave differently than on X86 platforms. Perhaps you can google for issues with your player and ARM? (Specifically 88F6281 which B3 runs). Perhaps there is a better suited version?
/Johannes (Excito co-founder a long time ago, but now I'm just Johannes)
meetro
Posts: 7
Joined: 13 Jun 2012, 17:33

Re: USB sound card noise problems

Post by meetro »

SOLVED :D

Finally, I found a workaround, that uses Alsa OSS output:
modprobe snd_pcm_oss
mpg321 -o oss track1.mp3
it is also necessary to change the last line in the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf with:
options snd-usb-audio index=0
The 0 might be different depending on the location of the USB sound card.

Now, the only problem left is to automatically load OSS at the start-up and to force all the applications to use it. :wink:
Last edited by meetro on 18 Jun 2012, 17:39, edited 1 time in total.
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