First experience with ACID app_rpt & usbradio audio popping problem.

[n8lbv]

Short version:

*Installed ACID
*Have audio popping problem with USB transmit (output) audio.
*I'm not surprised didn't expect it to work perfectly first attempt.
*Only tried one combinarion of hardware/cpu/motherboard so far.. I need to try other motherboards/CPUs.
* Tried 3 different USB devices and ports.
* played with moving interrupts disabling motehrboard built-on hardware etc.
* CPU runs at about 10% while USB radio is active..
* Loading PC heavily by running gzip -9 seti@home Lots of disk access lots of network activity seem to have zero impact on the popping frequentness.

* I'd like to know if anyone else here has had this or similar problems with consistent audio from the USB device (CM-108) and what they may have done
  to make it work better.

Long Version:

I gave it a go and went the 'easy' route just to get started..
I ended up trying it out on that 1.1Ghz AMD Duron CPU rack mount server..
I must say I'm extremely excited & please with this software..
But it would be too good to be true if it all just worked first try.. and of course would take all the 'fun'
out of getting it to work..
Ok enough small talk (haha)
Here's what I have going on:

Everything works except I am getting intermittent audio popping in the audio output of the USB sound device.
VERY intermittent maybe about 3-4 'pops' every minute on average.. 10 at most sometimes.. and other times several minutes go by without a 'pop'.
It seems to mostly occur during the CW ID beacon which I have going every minute..
The pops that are heard only happen when the 'transmitter' is active sending PL or CW ID or PLAYBACK...
My test arrangement has "radio key" running to produce continuous PL and occasional audio popping.
There is no radio actually hooked up yet.

OK will talk about the hardware a bit.. and probably worse case scenario here due to an 'all in one' motherboard..
It's a MSI 6378 'budget' Athlon board.. everything built on.
Has USB 1.1 *NOT 2*
I don't know/think this matters for a sound device.

Here's all of the things I have tried all of which have absolutely no effect on the intermittent popping...

1. Disabling everything not needed on motherboard including ethernet for test..
    ethernet + usb share an interrup line and there is no ability to re-route this in the bios
    so I turned off the ethernet on the motherboard for testing.

2. Carefully monitor CPU during audio pops running 'top' around 20 updates per second (this alone takes more CPU load than asterisk /app_rpt + usb radio.

3. On this motherboard the USB controller and ethernet share a PCI interuupt line and you cannot change it.
    I've tried disabling the built on ethernet and still get the popping..
    I've also flood and large pinged the machine which genreates huge numbers of interrups from the ethernet chip and this has no effect on the popping..

4. Tried other USB fobs with same chipset.
    Created various types of heavy system activity to see if it has any impact on the popping heavy disk use hevy network use and heavy vga use (text mode)
    moving interrupts (changing them) on the motherboard.. getting usb controller onto a different interuupt (ethernet ends up on same).

5. Measured and scoped 5V output on USB to be sure 'popping' sound is not coming from 5V power supply.

6. Am really looking to hear what some others experience has been with this..
    what works and what does not?
    The popping very much sounds like an interrupt issue or some kind of issue where the task of sending and audio stream is completely dropped for something else
and then resumed leaving lots of holes heard as pops in the output stream.

···

--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

[David_McGough]

Hi Steve,

What exactly do you mean by "popping"?? Is it a loud POP! like a drum or
is it a momentary audio drop-out or choppiness??

The reason I ask about choppiness is that I've experienced this issue.
But, I've never had loud POPS! ....

73, David kb4fxc

···

On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, Steve Gladden wrote:

Short version:

*Installed ACID
*Have audio popping problem with USB transmit (output) audio.
*I'm not surprised didn't expect it to work perfectly first attempt.
*Only tried one combinarion of hardware/cpu/motherboard so far.. I need
to try other motherboards/CPUs.
* Tried 3 different USB devices and ports.
* played with moving interrupts disabling motehrboard built-on hardware etc.
* CPU runs at about 10% while USB radio is active..
* Loading PC heavily by running gzip -9 seti@home Lots of disk access
lots of network activity seem to have zero impact on the popping
frequentness.

* I'd like to know if anyone else here has had this or similar problems
with consistent audio from the USB device (CM-108) and what they may
have done
  to make it work better.

Long Version:

I gave it a go and went the 'easy' route just to get started..
I ended up trying it out on that 1.1Ghz AMD Duron CPU rack mount server..
I must say I'm extremely excited & please with this software..
But it would be too good to be true if it all just worked first try..
and of course would take all the 'fun'
out of getting it to work..
Ok enough small talk (haha)
Here's what I have going on:

Everything works except I am getting intermittent audio popping in the
audio output of the USB sound device.
VERY intermittent maybe about 3-4 'pops' every minute on average.. 10 at
most sometimes.. and other times several minutes go by without a 'pop'.
It seems to mostly occur during the CW ID beacon which I have going
every minute..
The pops that are heard only happen when the 'transmitter' is active
sending PL or CW ID or PLAYBACK...
My test arrangement has "radio key" running to produce continuous PL and
occasional audio popping.
There is no radio actually hooked up yet.

OK will talk about the hardware a bit.. and probably worse case scenario
here due to an 'all in one' motherboard..
It's a MSI 6378 'budget' Athlon board.. everything built on.
Has USB 1.1 *NOT 2*
I don't know/think this matters for a sound device.

Here's all of the things I have tried all of which have absolutely no
effect on the intermittent popping...

1. Disabling everything not needed on motherboard including ethernet for
test..
    ethernet + usb share an interrup line and there is no ability to
re-route this in the bios
    so I turned off the ethernet on the motherboard for testing.

2. Carefully monitor CPU during audio pops running 'top' around 20
updates per second (this alone takes more CPU load than asterisk
/app_rpt + usb radio.

3. On this motherboard the USB controller and ethernet share a PCI
interuupt line and you cannot change it.
    I've tried disabling the built on ethernet and still get the popping..
    I've also flood and large pinged the machine which genreates huge
numbers of interrups from the ethernet chip and this has no effect on
the popping..

4. Tried other USB fobs with same chipset.
    Created various types of heavy system activity to see if it has any
impact on the popping heavy disk use hevy network use and heavy vga use
(text mode)
    moving interrupts (changing them) on the motherboard.. getting usb
controller onto a different interuupt (ethernet ends up on same).

5. Measured and scoped 5V output on USB to be sure 'popping' sound is
not coming from 5V power supply.

6. Am really looking to hear what some others experience has been with
this..
    what works and what does not?
    The popping very much sounds like an interrupt issue or some kind of
issue where the task of sending and audio stream is completely dropped
for something else
and then resumed leaving lots of holes heard as pops in the output stream.

[n8lbv]

Hi David.. it's not a terribly loud popping it's right with the normal audio
levels
It really sounds like 'holes' in the processing small abrupt dropouts of the
stream..
Very random in timing maybe 5-15 hits per minute when I key the radio with
PL..

Seems to more frequently happen on/around the CWID but still is happening
very randomly.

CPU utilization is ~10% while radio keyed producing PL and CWID..
Have radio continuously keyed (no actual radio) and CDID beacon going every
minute.

5-15 'dropouts' per minute.

I've tried to isolate it by throwing different tasks at the hardware/CPU to
see if the audio dropouts
Would increase or not during heavy CPU utilization or maxing out IO on
network hard drives etc.

Checked alsa mixer to make sure there were no open turned way up audio
inputs or mic monitor turned on..
Turned down all input levels and this had no effect on the dropouts either.

One thing I have not tried (but will not matter) is to hook a usb HDD to the
usb port and give the usb controller
Itself some activity besides the usbradio port and see if this impacts the
issue.

This might tend to point me back to the usb controller itself having an
issue..

I should also try a PCI external USB card on the motherboard and give it
it's own interrupt.

···

-----Original Message-----
From: David McGough [mailto:kb4fxc@inttek.net]
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 6:57 PM
To: Steve Gladden
Cc: app_rpt-users@qrvc.com
Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt & usbradio
audio popping problem.

Hi Steve,

What exactly do you mean by "popping"?? Is it a loud POP! like a drum or
is it a momentary audio drop-out or choppiness??

The reason I ask about choppiness is that I've experienced this issue.
But, I've never had loud POPS! ....

73, David kb4fxc

On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, Steve Gladden wrote:

Short version:

*Installed ACID
*Have audio popping problem with USB transmit (output) audio.
*I'm not surprised didn't expect it to work perfectly first attempt.
*Only tried one combinarion of hardware/cpu/motherboard so far.. I need
to try other motherboards/CPUs.
* Tried 3 different USB devices and ports.
* played with moving interrupts disabling motehrboard built-on hardware

etc.

* CPU runs at about 10% while USB radio is active..
* Loading PC heavily by running gzip -9 seti@home Lots of disk access
lots of network activity seem to have zero impact on the popping
frequentness.

* I'd like to know if anyone else here has had this or similar problems
with consistent audio from the USB device (CM-108) and what they may
have done
  to make it work better.

Long Version:

I gave it a go and went the 'easy' route just to get started..
I ended up trying it out on that 1.1Ghz AMD Duron CPU rack mount server..
I must say I'm extremely excited & please with this software..
But it would be too good to be true if it all just worked first try..
and of course would take all the 'fun'
out of getting it to work..
Ok enough small talk (haha)
Here's what I have going on:

Everything works except I am getting intermittent audio popping in the
audio output of the USB sound device.
VERY intermittent maybe about 3-4 'pops' every minute on average.. 10 at
most sometimes.. and other times several minutes go by without a 'pop'.
It seems to mostly occur during the CW ID beacon which I have going
every minute..
The pops that are heard only happen when the 'transmitter' is active
sending PL or CW ID or PLAYBACK...
My test arrangement has "radio key" running to produce continuous PL and
occasional audio popping.
There is no radio actually hooked up yet.

OK will talk about the hardware a bit.. and probably worse case scenario
here due to an 'all in one' motherboard..
It's a MSI 6378 'budget' Athlon board.. everything built on.
Has USB 1.1 *NOT 2*
I don't know/think this matters for a sound device.

Here's all of the things I have tried all of which have absolutely no
effect on the intermittent popping...

1. Disabling everything not needed on motherboard including ethernet for
test..
    ethernet + usb share an interrup line and there is no ability to
re-route this in the bios
    so I turned off the ethernet on the motherboard for testing.

2. Carefully monitor CPU during audio pops running 'top' around 20
updates per second (this alone takes more CPU load than asterisk
/app_rpt + usb radio.

3. On this motherboard the USB controller and ethernet share a PCI
interuupt line and you cannot change it.
    I've tried disabling the built on ethernet and still get the popping..
    I've also flood and large pinged the machine which genreates huge
numbers of interrups from the ethernet chip and this has no effect on
the popping..

4. Tried other USB fobs with same chipset.
    Created various types of heavy system activity to see if it has any
impact on the popping heavy disk use hevy network use and heavy vga use
(text mode)
    moving interrupts (changing them) on the motherboard.. getting usb
controller onto a different interuupt (ethernet ends up on same).

5. Measured and scoped 5V output on USB to be sure 'popping' sound is
not coming from 5V power supply.

6. Am really looking to hear what some others experience has been with
this..
    what works and what does not?
    The popping very much sounds like an interrupt issue or some kind of
issue where the task of sending and audio stream is completely dropped
for something else
and then resumed leaving lots of holes heard as pops in the output stream.

--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

[n8lbv]

Here's a youtube video of the popping I describe from the USB device:

app_rpt usbradio testing on somewhat lower end systems audio dropout problem.

If you have the patience to actually listen to about 3 minutes of 100Hz PL and the once per minute CWIDs you'll hear the audio
dropouts I am talking about..
Also a look on the scope (you'll also see it in that video) the audio is actually completely dropping off like cpu is elsewhere and the stream is not being processed for
short bursts of time but very randomly and sometimes not for over a minute at a time!
This sorta indicates to me it's not a CPU issue as CPU is maxed at only 30% during testing and machine is still very responsive with seemingly plenty of CPU overhead to spare..

I'm continuing to try this out.
My testing approach is to try it out on some older/lower end systems first and then work my way up..
I'd like to know what types of older not as fast systems will run the simplest node yet still be able to support
usbradio.
So far I'm at still at the very low end of systems and have not seen one work solidly yet..
I'm testing on system #3 now..
This one is an Intel Pentium3 system with a 600MHz CPU.

I'm still getting the audio 'popping' as before different & less frequent than on the AMD 1.1GHz system..
This system actually has the USB on a dedicated interrupt this time.

Using top During TX/RX the CPU is at a steady 30% Utilization where on the Duron 1.1Ghz box it was around 10%

Pop's on this system average 3-4 per minute.

My test is as follows... no radio hooked up and monitoring TX audio from USB audio device.

have CWID set to ever 60 seconds

issue a manual "radio key"

This sends continuous PL 100Hz out the audio device + CWID every minute.

I notice the audio dropouts very intermittently but a bit more common around the cwid event.

Steve Gladden wrote:

···

Hi David.. it's not a terribly loud popping it's right with the normal audio
levels
It really sounds like 'holes' in the processing small abrupt dropouts of the
stream..
Very random in timing maybe 5-15 hits per minute when I key the radio with
PL..

Seems to more frequently happen on/around the CWID but still is happening
very randomly.

CPU utilization is ~10% while radio keyed producing PL and CWID..
Have radio continuously keyed (no actual radio) and CDID beacon going every
minute.

5-15 'dropouts' per minute.

I've tried to isolate it by throwing different tasks at the hardware/CPU to
see if the audio dropouts
Would increase or not during heavy CPU utilization or maxing out IO on
network hard drives etc.

Checked alsa mixer to make sure there were no open turned way up audio
inputs or mic monitor turned on..
Turned down all input levels and this had no effect on the dropouts either.

One thing I have not tried (but will not matter) is to hook a usb HDD to the
usb port and give the usb controller
Itself some activity besides the usbradio port and see if this impacts the
issue.

This might tend to point me back to the usb controller itself having an
issue..

I should also try a PCI external USB card on the motherboard and give it
it's own interrupt.

-----Original Message-----
From: David McGough [mailto:kb4fxc@inttek.net] Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 6:57 PM
To: Steve Gladden
Cc: app_rpt-users@qrvc.com
Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt & usbradio
audio popping problem.

Hi Steve,

What exactly do you mean by "popping"?? Is it a loud POP! like a drum or is it a momentary audio drop-out or choppiness??

The reason I ask about choppiness is that I've experienced this issue. But, I've never had loud POPS! ....

73, David kb4fxc

On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, Steve Gladden wrote:

Short version:

*Installed ACID
*Have audio popping problem with USB transmit (output) audio.
*I'm not surprised didn't expect it to work perfectly first attempt.
*Only tried one combinarion of hardware/cpu/motherboard so far.. I need to try other motherboards/CPUs.
* Tried 3 different USB devices and ports.
* played with moving interrupts disabling motehrboard built-on hardware
    

etc.
  

* CPU runs at about 10% while USB radio is active..
* Loading PC heavily by running gzip -9 seti@home Lots of disk access lots of network activity seem to have zero impact on the popping frequentness.

* I'd like to know if anyone else here has had this or similar problems with consistent audio from the USB device (CM-108) and what they may have done
  to make it work better.

Long Version:

I gave it a go and went the 'easy' route just to get started..
I ended up trying it out on that 1.1Ghz AMD Duron CPU rack mount server..
I must say I'm extremely excited & please with this software..
But it would be too good to be true if it all just worked first try.. and of course would take all the 'fun'
out of getting it to work..
Ok enough small talk (haha)
Here's what I have going on:

Everything works except I am getting intermittent audio popping in the audio output of the USB sound device.
VERY intermittent maybe about 3-4 'pops' every minute on average.. 10 at most sometimes.. and other times several minutes go by without a 'pop'.
It seems to mostly occur during the CW ID beacon which I have going every minute..
The pops that are heard only happen when the 'transmitter' is active sending PL or CW ID or PLAYBACK...
My test arrangement has "radio key" running to produce continuous PL and occasional audio popping.
There is no radio actually hooked up yet.

OK will talk about the hardware a bit.. and probably worse case scenario here due to an 'all in one' motherboard..
It's a MSI 6378 'budget' Athlon board.. everything built on.
Has USB 1.1 *NOT 2*
I don't know/think this matters for a sound device.

Here's all of the things I have tried all of which have absolutely no effect on the intermittent popping...

1. Disabling everything not needed on motherboard including ethernet for test..
    ethernet + usb share an interrup line and there is no ability to re-route this in the bios
    so I turned off the ethernet on the motherboard for testing.

2. Carefully monitor CPU during audio pops running 'top' around 20 updates per second (this alone takes more CPU load than asterisk /app_rpt + usb radio.

3. On this motherboard the USB controller and ethernet share a PCI interuupt line and you cannot change it.
    I've tried disabling the built on ethernet and still get the popping..
    I've also flood and large pinged the machine which genreates huge numbers of interrups from the ethernet chip and this has no effect on the popping..

4. Tried other USB fobs with same chipset.
    Created various types of heavy system activity to see if it has any impact on the popping heavy disk use hevy network use and heavy vga use (text mode)
    moving interrupts (changing them) on the motherboard.. getting usb controller onto a different interuupt (ethernet ends up on same).

5. Measured and scoped 5V output on USB to be sure 'popping' sound is not coming from 5V power supply.

6. Am really looking to hear what some others experience has been with this..
    what works and what does not?
    The popping very much sounds like an interrupt issue or some kind of issue where the task of sending and audio stream is completely dropped for something else
and then resumed leaving lots of holes heard as pops in the output stream.

--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

[Sales1]

Steve Gladden wrote:

Hi David.. it's not a terribly loud popping it's right with the normal audio
levels
It really sounds like 'holes' in the processing small abrupt dropouts of the
stream..
Very random in timing maybe 5-15 hits per minute when I key the radio with
PL..

Seems to more frequently happen on/around the CWID but still is happening
very randomly.

CPU utilization is ~10% while radio keyed producing PL and CWID..
Have radio continuously keyed (no actual radio) and CDID beacon going every
minute.

5-15 'dropouts' per minute.

I've tried to isolate it by throwing different tasks at the hardware/CPU to
see if the audio dropouts
Would increase or not during heavy CPU utilization or maxing out IO on
network hard drives etc.

Checked alsa mixer to make sure there were no open turned way up audio
inputs or mic monitor turned on..
Turned down all input levels and this had no effect on the dropouts either.

One thing I have not tried (but will not matter) is to hook a usb HDD to the
usb port and give the usb controller
Itself some activity besides the usbradio port and see if this impacts the
issue.

This might tend to point me back to the usb controller itself having an
issue..

I should also try a PCI external USB card on the motherboard and give it
it's own interrupt.

From: David McGough [mailto:kb4fxc@inttek.net]
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 6:57 PM
To: Steve Gladden
Cc: app_rpt-users@qrvc.com
Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt & usbradio
audio popping problem.

Hi Steve,

What exactly do you mean by "popping"?? Is it a loud POP! like a drum or
is it a momentary audio drop-out or choppiness??

The reason I ask about choppiness is that I've experienced this issue.
But, I've never had loud POPS! ....

73, David kb4fxc

Short version:

*Installed ACID
*Have audio popping problem with USB transmit (output) audio.
*I'm not surprised didn't expect it to work perfectly first attempt.
*Only tried one combinarion of hardware/cpu/motherboard so far.. I need
to try other motherboards/CPUs.
* Tried 3 different USB devices and ports.
* played with moving interrupts disabling motehrboard built-on hardware

etc.

* CPU runs at about 10% while USB radio is active..
* Loading PC heavily by running gzip -9 seti@home Lots of disk access
lots of network activity seem to have zero impact on the popping
frequentness.

* I'd like to know if anyone else here has had this or similar problems
with consistent audio from the USB device (CM-108) and what they may
have done
  to make it work better.

Long Version:

I gave it a go and went the 'easy' route just to get started..
I ended up trying it out on that 1.1Ghz AMD Duron CPU rack mount server..
I must say I'm extremely excited & please with this software..
But it would be too good to be true if it all just worked first try..
and of course would take all the 'fun'
out of getting it to work..
Ok enough small talk (haha)
Here's what I have going on:

Everything works except I am getting intermittent audio popping in the
audio output of the USB sound device.
VERY intermittent maybe about 3-4 'pops' every minute on average.. 10 at
most sometimes.. and other times several minutes go by without a 'pop'.
It seems to mostly occur during the CW ID beacon which I have going
every minute..
The pops that are heard only happen when the 'transmitter' is active
sending PL or CW ID or PLAYBACK...
My test arrangement has "radio key" running to produce continuous PL and
occasional audio popping.
There is no radio actually hooked up yet.

OK will talk about the hardware a bit.. and probably worse case scenario
here due to an 'all in one' motherboard..
It's a MSI 6378 'budget' Athlon board.. everything built on.
Has USB 1.1 *NOT 2*
I don't know/think this matters for a sound device.

Here's all of the things I have tried all of which have absolutely no
effect on the intermittent popping...

1. Disabling everything not needed on motherboard including ethernet for
test..
    ethernet + usb share an interrup line and there is no ability to
re-route this in the bios
    so I turned off the ethernet on the motherboard for testing.

2. Carefully monitor CPU during audio pops running 'top' around 20
updates per second (this alone takes more CPU load than asterisk
/app_rpt + usb radio.

3. On this motherboard the USB controller and ethernet share a PCI
interuupt line and you cannot change it.
    I've tried disabling the built on ethernet and still get the popping..
    I've also flood and large pinged the machine which genreates huge
numbers of interrups from the ethernet chip and this has no effect on
the popping..

4. Tried other USB fobs with same chipset.
    Created various types of heavy system activity to see if it has any
impact on the popping heavy disk use hevy network use and heavy vga use
(text mode)
    moving interrupts (changing them) on the motherboard.. getting usb
controller onto a different interuupt (ethernet ends up on same).

5. Measured and scoped 5V output on USB to be sure 'popping' sound is
not coming from 5V power supply.

6. Am really looking to hear what some others experience has been with
this..
    what works and what does not?
    The popping very much sounds like an interrupt issue or some kind of
issue where the task of sending and audio stream is completely dropped
for something else
and then resumed leaving lots of holes heard as pops in the output stream.

This is reported occasionally, but I've never experienced it.

Given what you've tried already, I'd try a different motherboard.

Also, remove any usb hobs if you are using one.

Steve
WA6ZFT

···

-----Original Message-----
On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, Steve Gladden wrote:

[n8lbv]

Stephen Rodgers wrote:

Steve Gladden wrote:
  

Hi David.. it's not a terribly loud popping it's right with the normal audio
levels
It really sounds like 'holes' in the processing small abrupt dropouts of the
stream..
Very random in timing maybe 5-15 hits per minute when I key the radio with
PL..

Seems to more frequently happen on/around the CWID but still is happening
very randomly.

CPU utilization is ~10% while radio keyed producing PL and CWID..
Have radio continuously keyed (no actual radio) and CDID beacon going every
minute.

5-15 'dropouts' per minute.

I've tried to isolate it by throwing different tasks at the hardware/CPU to
see if the audio dropouts
Would increase or not during heavy CPU utilization or maxing out IO on
network hard drives etc.

Checked alsa mixer to make sure there were no open turned way up audio
inputs or mic monitor turned on..
Turned down all input levels and this had no effect on the dropouts either.

One thing I have not tried (but will not matter) is to hook a usb HDD to the
usb port and give the usb controller
Itself some activity besides the usbradio port and see if this impacts the
issue.

This might tend to point me back to the usb controller itself having an
issue..

I should also try a PCI external USB card on the motherboard and give it
it's own interrupt.

From: David McGough [mailto:kb4fxc@inttek.net] Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 6:57 PM
To: Steve Gladden
Cc: app_rpt-users@qrvc.com
Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt & usbradio
audio popping problem.

Hi Steve,

What exactly do you mean by "popping"?? Is it a loud POP! like a drum or is it a momentary audio drop-out or choppiness??

The reason I ask about choppiness is that I've experienced this issue. But, I've never had loud POPS! ....

73, David kb4fxc

Short version:

*Installed ACID
*Have audio popping problem with USB transmit (output) audio.
*I'm not surprised didn't expect it to work perfectly first attempt.
*Only tried one combinarion of hardware/cpu/motherboard so far.. I need to try other motherboards/CPUs.
* Tried 3 different USB devices and ports.
* played with moving interrupts disabling motehrboard built-on hardware
      

etc.
    

* CPU runs at about 10% while USB radio is active..
* Loading PC heavily by running gzip -9 seti@home Lots of disk access lots of network activity seem to have zero impact on the popping frequentness.

* I'd like to know if anyone else here has had this or similar problems with consistent audio from the USB device (CM-108) and what they may have done
  to make it work better.

Long Version:

I gave it a go and went the 'easy' route just to get started..
I ended up trying it out on that 1.1Ghz AMD Duron CPU rack mount server..
I must say I'm extremely excited & please with this software..
But it would be too good to be true if it all just worked first try.. and of course would take all the 'fun'
out of getting it to work..
Ok enough small talk (haha)
Here's what I have going on:

Everything works except I am getting intermittent audio popping in the audio output of the USB sound device.
VERY intermittent maybe about 3-4 'pops' every minute on average.. 10 at most sometimes.. and other times several minutes go by without a 'pop'.
It seems to mostly occur during the CW ID beacon which I have going every minute..
The pops that are heard only happen when the 'transmitter' is active sending PL or CW ID or PLAYBACK...
My test arrangement has "radio key" running to produce continuous PL and occasional audio popping.
There is no radio actually hooked up yet.

OK will talk about the hardware a bit.. and probably worse case scenario here due to an 'all in one' motherboard..
It's a MSI 6378 'budget' Athlon board.. everything built on.
Has USB 1.1 *NOT 2*
I don't know/think this matters for a sound device.

Here's all of the things I have tried all of which have absolutely no effect on the intermittent popping...

1. Disabling everything not needed on motherboard including ethernet for test..
    ethernet + usb share an interrup line and there is no ability to re-route this in the bios
    so I turned off the ethernet on the motherboard for testing.

2. Carefully monitor CPU during audio pops running 'top' around 20 updates per second (this alone takes more CPU load than asterisk /app_rpt + usb radio.

3. On this motherboard the USB controller and ethernet share a PCI interuupt line and you cannot change it.
    I've tried disabling the built on ethernet and still get the popping..
    I've also flood and large pinged the machine which genreates huge numbers of interrups from the ethernet chip and this has no effect on the popping..

4. Tried other USB fobs with same chipset.
    Created various types of heavy system activity to see if it has any impact on the popping heavy disk use hevy network use and heavy vga use (text mode)
    moving interrupts (changing them) on the motherboard.. getting usb controller onto a different interuupt (ethernet ends up on same).

5. Measured and scoped 5V output on USB to be sure 'popping' sound is not coming from 5V power supply.

6. Am really looking to hear what some others experience has been with this..
    what works and what does not?
    The popping very much sounds like an interrupt issue or some kind of issue where the task of sending and audio stream is completely dropped for something else
and then resumed leaving lots of holes heard as pops in the output stream.

This is reported occasionally, but I've never experienced it.

Given what you've tried already, I'd try a different motherboard.

Also, remove any usb hobs if you are using one.

Steve
WA6ZFT

Hello David... I *may* also be on to something here as I've been able to also determine that the audio pops are occuring ALWAYS
While app_rpt is doing it's statpost routine! updating stats via the web.

I set te statpost address to something local on the LAN for now just for testing but I get the same audio pops whether just on the
LAN or if it's statposting out to the internet.

The popping definitely happening at the time that app_rpt is sending HTTP out..
The popping never happens during other access to-from the ethernet or during IAX interchanges between asterisk and the world..
Seems to be only when app_rpt is stat posting...
Dave I think you are certainl correct about the issue being within app_rpt.
I'm sure the stat posting is not the only issue but I can duplicate the problem 100% by seeing the popping every time app_rpt
sends out HTTP.

You may have already found that app_rpt does the 'droppouts' with a ton of other activities... not just stat posting like I am currently
pointing out...

Might be a start to something though... since it's duplicatable here.

Note: I've not figured out how to manually make it statpost.. I just turend up the debug to 7 and waited for it to say it was statposting
also looking at the ethernet and see the HTTP packets go out at same time dropous are ocurring.

···

-----Original Message-----
On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, Steve Gladden wrote:

--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

[Telesistant]

if you dont mind, I would like to ask a completely left-field question.

What kind of ethernet hardware do you have on your system, and what kind of
bus controller (northbridge, etc). Back in the really old days when we first
were using Zapata Telephony cards, we found a number of drivers that had, well
lets say, some serious issues in Linux.

Thanks for humoring me.

JIM WB6NIL

···

----------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:27:01 -0500
From: steve@michiganbroadband.com
To: sales@qrvc.com
CC: app_rpt-users@qrvc.com
Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt & usbradio audio popping problem.

Stephen Rodgers wrote:

Steve Gladden wrote:

Hi David.. it's not a terribly loud popping it's right with the normal audio
levels
It really sounds like 'holes' in the processing small abrupt dropouts of the
stream..
Very random in timing maybe 5-15 hits per minute when I key the radio with
PL..

Seems to more frequently happen on/around the CWID but still is happening
very randomly.

CPU utilization is ~10% while radio keyed producing PL and CWID..
Have radio continuously keyed (no actual radio) and CDID beacon going every
minute.

5-15 'dropouts' per minute.

I've tried to isolate it by throwing different tasks at the hardware/CPU to
see if the audio dropouts
Would increase or not during heavy CPU utilization or maxing out IO on
network hard drives etc.

Checked alsa mixer to make sure there were no open turned way up audio
inputs or mic monitor turned on..
Turned down all input levels and this had no effect on the dropouts either.

One thing I have not tried (but will not matter) is to hook a usb HDD to the
usb port and give the usb controller
Itself some activity besides the usbradio port and see if this impacts the
issue.

This might tend to point me back to the usb controller itself having an
issue..

I should also try a PCI external USB card on the motherboard and give it
it's own interrupt.

-----Original Message-----
From: David McGough [mailto:kb4fxc@inttek.net]
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 6:57 PM
To: Steve Gladden
Cc: app_rpt-users@qrvc.com
Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt & usbradio
audio popping problem.

Hi Steve,

What exactly do you mean by "popping"?? Is it a loud POP! like a drum or
is it a momentary audio drop-out or choppiness??

The reason I ask about choppiness is that I've experienced this issue.
But, I've never had loud POPS! ....

73, David kb4fxc

On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, Steve Gladden wrote:

Short version:

*Installed ACID
*Have audio popping problem with USB transmit (output) audio.
*I'm not surprised didn't expect it to work perfectly first attempt.
*Only tried one combinarion of hardware/cpu/motherboard so far.. I need
to try other motherboards/CPUs.
* Tried 3 different USB devices and ports.
* played with moving interrupts disabling motehrboard built-on hardware

etc.

* CPU runs at about 10% while USB radio is active..
* Loading PC heavily by running gzip -9 seti@home Lots of disk access
lots of network activity seem to have zero impact on the popping
frequentness.

* I'd like to know if anyone else here has had this or similar problems
with consistent audio from the USB device (CM-108) and what they may
have done
to make it work better.

Long Version:

I gave it a go and went the 'easy' route just to get started..
I ended up trying it out on that 1.1Ghz AMD Duron CPU rack mount server..
I must say I'm extremely excited & please with this software..
But it would be too good to be true if it all just worked first try..
and of course would take all the 'fun'
out of getting it to work..
Ok enough small talk (haha)
Here's what I have going on:

Everything works except I am getting intermittent audio popping in the
audio output of the USB sound device.
VERY intermittent maybe about 3-4 'pops' every minute on average.. 10 at
most sometimes.. and other times several minutes go by without a 'pop'.
It seems to mostly occur during the CW ID beacon which I have going
every minute..
The pops that are heard only happen when the 'transmitter' is active
sending PL or CW ID or PLAYBACK...
My test arrangement has "radio key" running to produce continuous PL and
occasional audio popping.
There is no radio actually hooked up yet.

OK will talk about the hardware a bit.. and probably worse case scenario
here due to an 'all in one' motherboard..
It's a MSI 6378 'budget' Athlon board.. everything built on.
Has USB 1.1 *NOT 2*
I don't know/think this matters for a sound device.

Here's all of the things I have tried all of which have absolutely no
effect on the intermittent popping...

1. Disabling everything not needed on motherboard including ethernet for
test..
ethernet + usb share an interrup line and there is no ability to
re-route this in the bios
so I turned off the ethernet on the motherboard for testing.

2. Carefully monitor CPU during audio pops running 'top' around 20
updates per second (this alone takes more CPU load than asterisk
/app_rpt + usb radio.

3. On this motherboard the USB controller and ethernet share a PCI
interuupt line and you cannot change it.
I've tried disabling the built on ethernet and still get the popping..
I've also flood and large pinged the machine which genreates huge
numbers of interrups from the ethernet chip and this has no effect on
the popping..

4. Tried other USB fobs with same chipset.
Created various types of heavy system activity to see if it has any
impact on the popping heavy disk use hevy network use and heavy vga use
(text mode)
moving interrupts (changing them) on the motherboard.. getting usb
controller onto a different interuupt (ethernet ends up on same).

5. Measured and scoped 5V output on USB to be sure 'popping' sound is
not coming from 5V power supply.

6. Am really looking to hear what some others experience has been with
this..
what works and what does not?
The popping very much sounds like an interrupt issue or some kind of
issue where the task of sending and audio stream is completely dropped
for something else
and then resumed leaving lots of holes heard as pops in the output stream.

This is reported occasionally, but I've never experienced it.

Given what you've tried already, I'd try a different motherboard.

Also, remove any usb hobs if you are using one.

Steve
WA6ZFT

Hello David... I *may* also be on to something here as I've been able to
also determine that the audio pops are occuring ALWAYS
While app_rpt is doing it's statpost routine! updating stats via the web.

I set te statpost address to something local on the LAN for now just for
testing but I get the same audio pops whether just on the
LAN or if it's statposting out to the internet.

The popping definitely happening at the time that app_rpt is sending
HTTP out..
The popping never happens during other access to-from the ethernet or
during IAX interchanges between asterisk and the world..
Seems to be only when app_rpt is stat posting...
Dave I think you are certainl correct about the issue being within app_rpt.
I'm sure the stat posting is not the only issue but I can duplicate the
problem 100% by seeing the popping every time app_rpt
sends out HTTP.

You may have already found that app_rpt does the 'droppouts' with a ton
of other activities... not just stat posting like I am currently
pointing out...

Might be a start to something though... since it's duplicatable here.

Note: I've not figured out how to manually make it statpost.. I just
turend up the debug to 7 and waited for it to say it was statposting
also looking at the ethernet and see the HTTP packets go out at same
time dropous are ocurring.

--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

_______________________________________________
App_rpt-users mailing list
App_rpt-users@qrvc.com
http://qrvc.com/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt-users

[n8lbv]

Jim Duuuude wrote:

if you dont mind, I would like to ask a completely left-field question.

What kind of ethernet hardware do you have on your system, and what kind of bus controller (northbridge, etc). Back in the really old days when we first
were using Zapata Telephony cards, we found a number of drivers that had, well
lets say, some serious issues in Linux.

Thanks for humoring me.

JIM WB6NIL

----------------------------------------
  

Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:27:01 -0500
From: steve@michiganbroadband.com
To: sales@qrvc.com
CC: app_rpt-users@qrvc.com
Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt & usbradio audio popping problem.

Stephen Rodgers wrote:
    

Steve Gladden wrote:

Hi David.. it's not a terribly loud popping it's right with the normal audio
levels
It really sounds like 'holes' in the processing small abrupt dropouts of the
stream..
Very random in timing maybe 5-15 hits per minute when I key the radio with
PL..

Seems to more frequently happen on/around the CWID but still is happening
very randomly.

CPU utilization is ~10% while radio keyed producing PL and CWID..
Have radio continuously keyed (no actual radio) and CDID beacon going every
minute.

5-15 'dropouts' per minute.

I've tried to isolate it by throwing different tasks at the hardware/CPU to
see if the audio dropouts
Would increase or not during heavy CPU utilization or maxing out IO on
network hard drives etc.

Checked alsa mixer to make sure there were no open turned way up audio
inputs or mic monitor turned on..
Turned down all input levels and this had no effect on the dropouts either.

One thing I have not tried (but will not matter) is to hook a usb HDD to the
usb port and give the usb controller
Itself some activity besides the usbradio port and see if this impacts the
issue.

This might tend to point me back to the usb controller itself having an
issue..

I should also try a PCI external USB card on the motherboard and give it
it's own interrupt.

From: David McGough [mailto:kb4fxc@inttek.net]
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 6:57 PM
To: Steve Gladden
Cc: app_rpt-users@qrvc.com
Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt & usbradio
audio popping problem.

Hi Steve,

What exactly do you mean by "popping"?? Is it a loud POP! like a drum or
is it a momentary audio drop-out or choppiness??

The reason I ask about choppiness is that I've experienced this issue.
But, I've never had loud POPS! ....

73, David kb4fxc

Short version:

*Installed ACID
*Have audio popping problem with USB transmit (output) audio.
*I'm not surprised didn't expect it to work perfectly first attempt.
*Only tried one combinarion of hardware/cpu/motherboard so far.. I need
to try other motherboards/CPUs.
* Tried 3 different USB devices and ports.
* played with moving interrupts disabling motehrboard built-on hardware

etc.

* CPU runs at about 10% while USB radio is active..
* Loading PC heavily by running gzip -9 seti@home Lots of disk access
lots of network activity seem to have zero impact on the popping
frequentness.

* I'd like to know if anyone else here has had this or similar problems
with consistent audio from the USB device (CM-108) and what they may
have done
to make it work better.

Long Version:

I gave it a go and went the 'easy' route just to get started..
I ended up trying it out on that 1.1Ghz AMD Duron CPU rack mount server..
I must say I'm extremely excited & please with this software..
But it would be too good to be true if it all just worked first try..
and of course would take all the 'fun'
out of getting it to work..
Ok enough small talk (haha)
Here's what I have going on:

Everything works except I am getting intermittent audio popping in the
audio output of the USB sound device.
VERY intermittent maybe about 3-4 'pops' every minute on average.. 10 at
most sometimes.. and other times several minutes go by without a 'pop'.
It seems to mostly occur during the CW ID beacon which I have going
every minute..
The pops that are heard only happen when the 'transmitter' is active
sending PL or CW ID or PLAYBACK...
My test arrangement has "radio key" running to produce continuous PL and
occasional audio popping.
There is no radio actually hooked up yet.

OK will talk about the hardware a bit.. and probably worse case scenario
here due to an 'all in one' motherboard..
It's a MSI 6378 'budget' Athlon board.. everything built on.
Has USB 1.1 *NOT 2*
I don't know/think this matters for a sound device.

Here's all of the things I have tried all of which have absolutely no
effect on the intermittent popping...

1. Disabling everything not needed on motherboard including ethernet for
test..
ethernet + usb share an interrup line and there is no ability to
re-route this in the bios
so I turned off the ethernet on the motherboard for testing.

2. Carefully monitor CPU during audio pops running 'top' around 20
updates per second (this alone takes more CPU load than asterisk
/app_rpt + usb radio.

3. On this motherboard the USB controller and ethernet share a PCI
interuupt line and you cannot change it.
I've tried disabling the built on ethernet and still get the popping..
I've also flood and large pinged the machine which genreates huge
numbers of interrups from the ethernet chip and this has no effect on
the popping..

4. Tried other USB fobs with same chipset.
Created various types of heavy system activity to see if it has any
impact on the popping heavy disk use hevy network use and heavy vga use
(text mode)
moving interrupts (changing them) on the motherboard.. getting usb
controller onto a different interuupt (ethernet ends up on same).

5. Measured and scoped 5V output on USB to be sure 'popping' sound is
not coming from 5V power supply.

6. Am really looking to hear what some others experience has been with
this..
what works and what does not?
The popping very much sounds like an interrupt issue or some kind of
issue where the task of sending and audio stream is completely dropped
for something else
and then resumed leaving lots of holes heard as pops in the output stream.

This is reported occasionally, but I've never experienced it.

Given what you've tried already, I'd try a different motherboard.

Also, remove any usb hobs if you are using one.

Steve
WA6ZFT

Hello David... I *may* also be on to something here as I've been able to
also determine that the audio pops are occuring ALWAYS
While app_rpt is doing it's statpost routine! updating stats via the web.

I set te statpost address to something local on the LAN for now just for
testing but I get the same audio pops whether just on the
LAN or if it's statposting out to the internet.

The popping definitely happening at the time that app_rpt is sending
HTTP out..
The popping never happens during other access to-from the ethernet or
during IAX interchanges between asterisk and the world..
Seems to be only when app_rpt is stat posting...
Dave I think you are certainl correct about the issue being within app_rpt.
I'm sure the stat posting is not the only issue but I can duplicate the
problem 100% by seeing the popping every time app_rpt
sends out HTTP.

You may have already found that app_rpt does the 'droppouts' with a ton
of other activities... not just stat posting like I am currently
pointing out...

Might be a start to something though... since it's duplicatable here.

Note: I've not figured out how to manually make it statpost.. I just
turend up the debug to 7 and waited for it to say it was statposting
also looking at the ethernet and see the HTTP packets go out at same
time dropous are ocurring.

--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

_______________________________________________
App_rpt-users mailing list
App_rpt-users@qrvc.com
http://qrvc.com/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt-users
    

Hello Jim,
I'll be trying out a lot of different hardware with this and comparing notes especially with the USB audio dropout issue.

I'm pretty much just getting started..
Whats been tried so far is two 'all in one' motherboards (intentionally as these are worse case scenario) and lower end CPUs.

Fisrt motherboard is an MSI 6378 V3 board Built on everything VIA�
Apollo KLE133 (VT8361+VT82C686B) with AMD Duron 1.1Ghz CPU
Manual available at http://stuff.michiganbroadband.com/6378v3.1.pdf

The 2nd combo is an old HP deskltop with a 600MHz Pentium-III
Motherboard is an Asus CUV-NT (HP supplied). manual available at http://stuff.michiganbroadband.com/cuv-nt-manual.pdf
NB: VIA VT82C694X 133A
SB: VIA VT82C596B
Build on Riva TNT vinatage VGA.
No built on ethernet..
Using RTL8139 PCI card at the moment.

Still get audio dropouts with no ethernet card installed + no driver loaded.
Have not been able to change dropout frequency of occurance by making the ethernet or CPU very busy.

Again worse case type of systems/motherboards to be trying out eh?
I thought I'd heard bad mention somewhere of VIA chipsets for this use as well.

David is also leading me to understand per his experience with the same types of dropouts didn't seem to be hardware related
And has been made better through some software tweaks/hacks.
I've got a lot of homework to do here.

···

-----Original Message-----
On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, Steve Gladden wrote:

--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

[n8lbv]

Jim Duuuude wrote:

if you dont mind, I would like to ask a completely left-field question.

What kind of ethernet hardware do you have on your system, and what kind of bus controller (northbridge, etc). Back in the really old days when we first
were using Zapata Telephony cards, we found a number of drivers that had, well
lets say, some serious issues in Linux.

Thanks for humoring me.

JIM WB6NIL

----------------------------------------
  

Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:27:01 -0500
From: steve@michiganbroadband.com
To: sales@qrvc.com
CC: app_rpt-users@qrvc.com
Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt & usbradio audio popping problem.

Stephen Rodgers wrote:
    

Steve Gladden wrote:

Hi David.. it's not a terribly loud popping it's right with the normal audio
levels
It really sounds like 'holes' in the processing small abrupt dropouts of the
stream..
Very random in timing maybe 5-15 hits per minute when I key the radio with
PL..

Seems to more frequently happen on/around the CWID but still is happening
very randomly.

CPU utilization is ~10% while radio keyed producing PL and CWID..
Have radio continuously keyed (no actual radio) and CDID beacon going every
minute.

5-15 'dropouts' per minute.

I've tried to isolate it by throwing different tasks at the hardware/CPU to
see if the audio dropouts
Would increase or not during heavy CPU utilization or maxing out IO on
network hard drives etc.

Checked alsa mixer to make sure there were no open turned way up audio
inputs or mic monitor turned on..
Turned down all input levels and this had no effect on the dropouts either.

One thing I have not tried (but will not matter) is to hook a usb HDD to the
usb port and give the usb controller
Itself some activity besides the usbradio port and see if this impacts the
issue.

This might tend to point me back to the usb controller itself having an
issue..

I should also try a PCI external USB card on the motherboard and give it
it's own interrupt.

From: David McGough [mailto:kb4fxc@inttek.net]
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 6:57 PM
To: Steve Gladden
Cc: app_rpt-users@qrvc.com
Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt & usbradio
audio popping problem.

Hi Steve,

What exactly do you mean by "popping"?? Is it a loud POP! like a drum or
is it a momentary audio drop-out or choppiness??

The reason I ask about choppiness is that I've experienced this issue.
But, I've never had loud POPS! ....

73, David kb4fxc

Short version:

*Installed ACID
*Have audio popping problem with USB transmit (output) audio.
*I'm not surprised didn't expect it to work perfectly first attempt.
*Only tried one combinarion of hardware/cpu/motherboard so far.. I need
to try other motherboards/CPUs.
* Tried 3 different USB devices and ports.
* played with moving interrupts disabling motehrboard built-on hardware

etc.

* CPU runs at about 10% while USB radio is active..
* Loading PC heavily by running gzip -9 seti@home Lots of disk access
lots of network activity seem to have zero impact on the popping
frequentness.

* I'd like to know if anyone else here has had this or similar problems
with consistent audio from the USB device (CM-108) and what they may
have done
to make it work better.

Long Version:

I gave it a go and went the 'easy' route just to get started..
I ended up trying it out on that 1.1Ghz AMD Duron CPU rack mount server..
I must say I'm extremely excited & please with this software..
But it would be too good to be true if it all just worked first try..
and of course would take all the 'fun'
out of getting it to work..
Ok enough small talk (haha)
Here's what I have going on:

Everything works except I am getting intermittent audio popping in the
audio output of the USB sound device.
VERY intermittent maybe about 3-4 'pops' every minute on average.. 10 at
most sometimes.. and other times several minutes go by without a 'pop'.
It seems to mostly occur during the CW ID beacon which I have going
every minute..
The pops that are heard only happen when the 'transmitter' is active
sending PL or CW ID or PLAYBACK...
My test arrangement has "radio key" running to produce continuous PL and
occasional audio popping.
There is no radio actually hooked up yet.

OK will talk about the hardware a bit.. and probably worse case scenario
here due to an 'all in one' motherboard..
It's a MSI 6378 'budget' Athlon board.. everything built on.
Has USB 1.1 *NOT 2*
I don't know/think this matters for a sound device.

Here's all of the things I have tried all of which have absolutely no
effect on the intermittent popping...

1. Disabling everything not needed on motherboard including ethernet for
test..
ethernet + usb share an interrup line and there is no ability to
re-route this in the bios
so I turned off the ethernet on the motherboard for testing.

2. Carefully monitor CPU during audio pops running 'top' around 20
updates per second (this alone takes more CPU load than asterisk
/app_rpt + usb radio.

3. On this motherboard the USB controller and ethernet share a PCI
interuupt line and you cannot change it.
I've tried disabling the built on ethernet and still get the popping..
I've also flood and large pinged the machine which genreates huge
numbers of interrups from the ethernet chip and this has no effect on
the popping..

4. Tried other USB fobs with same chipset.
Created various types of heavy system activity to see if it has any
impact on the popping heavy disk use hevy network use and heavy vga use
(text mode)
moving interrupts (changing them) on the motherboard.. getting usb
controller onto a different interuupt (ethernet ends up on same).

5. Measured and scoped 5V output on USB to be sure 'popping' sound is
not coming from 5V power supply.

6. Am really looking to hear what some others experience has been with
this..
what works and what does not?
The popping very much sounds like an interrupt issue or some kind of
issue where the task of sending and audio stream is completely dropped
for something else
and then resumed leaving lots of holes heard as pops in the output stream.

This is reported occasionally, but I've never experienced it.

Given what you've tried already, I'd try a different motherboard.

Also, remove any usb hobs if you are using one.

Steve
WA6ZFT

Hello David... I *may* also be on to something here as I've been able to
also determine that the audio pops are occuring ALWAYS
While app_rpt is doing it's statpost routine! updating stats via the web.

I set te statpost address to something local on the LAN for now just for
testing but I get the same audio pops whether just on the
LAN or if it's statposting out to the internet.

The popping definitely happening at the time that app_rpt is sending
HTTP out..
The popping never happens during other access to-from the ethernet or
during IAX interchanges between asterisk and the world..
Seems to be only when app_rpt is stat posting...
Dave I think you are certainl correct about the issue being within app_rpt.
I'm sure the stat posting is not the only issue but I can duplicate the
problem 100% by seeing the popping every time app_rpt
sends out HTTP.

You may have already found that app_rpt does the 'droppouts' with a ton
of other activities... not just stat posting like I am currently
pointing out...

Might be a start to something though... since it's duplicatable here.

Note: I've not figured out how to manually make it statpost.. I just
turend up the debug to 7 and waited for it to say it was statposting
also looking at the ethernet and see the HTTP packets go out at same
time dropous are ocurring.

--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

_______________________________________________
App_rpt-users mailing list
App_rpt-users@qrvc.com
http://qrvc.com/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt-users
    

I'm on test machine #4 now this one is a P3 @450Mhz on an Asus P2-99 Motherboard.. no built on video audio or ethernet..
A bit of a slower CPU on this one the audio dropouts are about the same (just as bad no worse) Turning off the stat post
by commenting out the two lines makes a HUGE difference for the better but still not perfect as there is still some dropouts..
This is totally stock off the ACID install after all updates & setup.

I still (badly) need to try David's suggested source and re-compile fixes and see what I get.
I've certainly found that the stat post part of app_rpt is really making the problem show up when it is active.
Besides needing to apply & try David's fixes I am still at the same time trying this on a variety of different hardware..
So far ACID out of the box has had the same issue of 4 different systems.

On this last attempt with a P2-99 I've gotten away from the VIA chipsets and pretty much all of the on motherboard problem/frustration causers.
This Motherboard uses Intel NB and SB.. A copy of the manual for this one is at: http://stuff.michiganbroadband.com/p2-99.pdf

Cheers!
Steve

···

-----Original Message-----
On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, Steve Gladden wrote:

--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

[Sales1]

Steve Gladden wrote:

Jim Duuuude wrote:

if you dont mind, I would like to ask a completely left-field question.

What kind of ethernet hardware do you have on your system, and what kind of
bus controller (northbridge, etc). Back in the really old days when we first
were using Zapata Telephony cards, we found a number of drivers that had, well
lets say, some serious issues in Linux.

Thanks for humoring me.

JIM WB6NIL

----------------------------------------
  

Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:27:01 -0500
From: steve@michiganbroadband.com
To: sales@qrvc.com
CC: app_rpt-users@qrvc.com
Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt & usbradio audio popping problem.

Stephen Rodgers wrote:
    

Steve Gladden wrote:

Hi David.. it's not a terribly loud popping it's right with the normal audio
levels
It really sounds like 'holes' in the processing small abrupt dropouts of the
stream..
Very random in timing maybe 5-15 hits per minute when I key the radio with
PL..

Seems to more frequently happen on/around the CWID but still is happening
very randomly.

CPU utilization is ~10% while radio keyed producing PL and CWID..
Have radio continuously keyed (no actual radio) and CDID beacon going every
minute.

5-15 'dropouts' per minute.

I've tried to isolate it by throwing different tasks at the hardware/CPU to
see if the audio dropouts
Would increase or not during heavy CPU utilization or maxing out IO on
network hard drives etc.

Checked alsa mixer to make sure there were no open turned way up audio
inputs or mic monitor turned on..
Turned down all input levels and this had no effect on the dropouts either.

One thing I have not tried (but will not matter) is to hook a usb HDD to the
usb port and give the usb controller
Itself some activity besides the usbradio port and see if this impacts the
issue.

This might tend to point me back to the usb controller itself having an
issue..

I should also try a PCI external USB card on the motherboard and give it
it's own interrupt.

From: David McGough [mailto:kb4fxc@inttek.net]
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 6:57 PM
To: Steve Gladden
Cc: app_rpt-users@qrvc.com
Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt & usbradio
audio popping problem.

Hi Steve,

What exactly do you mean by "popping"?? Is it a loud POP! like a drum or
is it a momentary audio drop-out or choppiness??

The reason I ask about choppiness is that I've experienced this issue.
But, I've never had loud POPS! ....

73, David kb4fxc

Short version:

*Installed ACID
*Have audio popping problem with USB transmit (output) audio.
*I'm not surprised didn't expect it to work perfectly first attempt.
*Only tried one combinarion of hardware/cpu/motherboard so far.. I need
to try other motherboards/CPUs.
* Tried 3 different USB devices and ports.
* played with moving interrupts disabling motehrboard built-on hardware

etc.

* CPU runs at about 10% while USB radio is active..
* Loading PC heavily by running gzip -9 seti@home Lots of disk access
lots of network activity seem to have zero impact on the popping
frequentness.

* I'd like to know if anyone else here has had this or similar problems
with consistent audio from the USB device (CM-108) and what they may
have done
to make it work better.

Long Version:

I gave it a go and went the 'easy' route just to get started..
I ended up trying it out on that 1.1Ghz AMD Duron CPU rack mount server..
I must say I'm extremely excited & please with this software..
But it would be too good to be true if it all just worked first try..
and of course would take all the 'fun'
out of getting it to work..
Ok enough small talk (haha)
Here's what I have going on:

Everything works except I am getting intermittent audio popping in the
audio output of the USB sound device.
VERY intermittent maybe about 3-4 'pops' every minute on average.. 10 at
most sometimes.. and other times several minutes go by without a 'pop'.
It seems to mostly occur during the CW ID beacon which I have going
every minute..
The pops that are heard only happen when the 'transmitter' is active
sending PL or CW ID or PLAYBACK...
My test arrangement has "radio key" running to produce continuous PL and
occasional audio popping.
There is no radio actually hooked up yet.

OK will talk about the hardware a bit.. and probably worse case scenario
here due to an 'all in one' motherboard..
It's a MSI 6378 'budget' Athlon board.. everything built on.
Has USB 1.1 *NOT 2*
I don't know/think this matters for a sound device.

Here's all of the things I have tried all of which have absolutely no
effect on the intermittent popping...

1. Disabling everything not needed on motherboard including ethernet for
test..
ethernet + usb share an interrup line and there is no ability to
re-route this in the bios
so I turned off the ethernet on the motherboard for testing.

2. Carefully monitor CPU during audio pops running 'top' around 20
updates per second (this alone takes more CPU load than asterisk
/app_rpt + usb radio.

3. On this motherboard the USB controller and ethernet share a PCI
interuupt line and you cannot change it.
I've tried disabling the built on ethernet and still get the popping..
I've also flood and large pinged the machine which genreates huge
numbers of interrups from the ethernet chip and this has no effect on
the popping..

4. Tried other USB fobs with same chipset.
Created various types of heavy system activity to see if it has any
impact on the popping heavy disk use hevy network use and heavy vga use
(text mode)
moving interrupts (changing them) on the motherboard.. getting usb
controller onto a different interuupt (ethernet ends up on same).

5. Measured and scoped 5V output on USB to be sure 'popping' sound is
not coming from 5V power supply.

6. Am really looking to hear what some others experience has been with
this..
what works and what does not?
The popping very much sounds like an interrupt issue or some kind of
issue where the task of sending and audio stream is completely dropped
for something else
and then resumed leaving lots of holes heard as pops in the output stream.

This is reported occasionally, but I've never experienced it.

Given what you've tried already, I'd try a different motherboard.

Also, remove any usb hobs if you are using one.

Steve
WA6ZFT

Hello David... I *may* also be on to something here as I've been able to
also determine that the audio pops are occuring ALWAYS
While app_rpt is doing it's statpost routine! updating stats via the web.

I set te statpost address to something local on the LAN for now just for
testing but I get the same audio pops whether just on the
LAN or if it's statposting out to the internet.

The popping definitely happening at the time that app_rpt is sending
HTTP out..
The popping never happens during other access to-from the ethernet or
during IAX interchanges between asterisk and the world..
Seems to be only when app_rpt is stat posting...
Dave I think you are certainl correct about the issue being within app_rpt.
I'm sure the stat posting is not the only issue but I can duplicate the
problem 100% by seeing the popping every time app_rpt
sends out HTTP.

You may have already found that app_rpt does the 'droppouts' with a ton
of other activities... not just stat posting like I am currently
pointing out...

Might be a start to something though... since it's duplicatable here.

Note: I've not figured out how to manually make it statpost.. I just
turend up the debug to 7 and waited for it to say it was statposting
also looking at the ethernet and see the HTTP packets go out at same
time dropous are ocurring.

--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

_______________________________________________
App_rpt-users mailing list
App_rpt-users@qrvc.com
http://qrvc.com/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt-users
    

I'm on test machine #4 now this one is a P3 @450Mhz on an Asus P2-99
Motherboard.. no built on video audio or ethernet..
A bit of a slower CPU on this one the audio dropouts are about the same
(just as bad no worse) Turning off the stat post
by commenting out the two lines makes a HUGE difference for the better
but still not perfect as there is still some dropouts..
This is totally stock off the ACID install after all updates & setup.

I still (badly) need to try David's suggested source and re-compile
fixes and see what I get.
I've certainly found that the stat post part of app_rpt is really making
the problem show up when it is active.
Besides needing to apply & try David's fixes I am still at the same time
trying this on a variety of different hardware..
So far ACID out of the box has had the same issue of 4 different systems.

On this last attempt with a P2-99 I've gotten away from the VIA chipsets
and pretty much all of the on motherboard problem/frustration causers.
This Motherboard uses Intel NB and SB.. A copy of the manual for this
one is at: http://stuff.michiganbroadband.com/p2-99.pdf

Cheers!
Steve

All the machines you have tried except one are sub 1GHz. And the 1.1GHz machine you were using is a Duron processor
which is the low end of the low end! In our documentation we specify a machine with a clock speed of 1GHz or better. The
DSP routines in chan_usbradio/XPMR may be getting bogged down for an instant during the fork or ethernet packet
transmission of the statpost info. We have not had much luck running ACID on machines under 1GHz and we have not tested
it on Celeron or Duron processors.

There are lots of users out there using ACID, but I suspect if you ask them, they are running processors north of 1GHz
and that most of them are running later vintage processors from Intel and AMD.

If you want to continue using old motherboards with slower clock speeds and old low end processors, then you have to
expect these kinds of issues.

Steve
WA6ZFT

···

-----Original Message-----
On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, Steve Gladden wrote:

[David_McGough]

<snip>

All the machines you have tried except one are sub 1GHz. And the 1.1GHz machine you were using is a Duron processor
which is the low end of the low end! In our documentation we specify a machine with a clock speed of 1GHz or better. The
DSP routines in chan_usbradio/XPMR may be getting bogged down for an instant during the fork or ethernet packet
transmission of the statpost info. We have not had much luck running ACID on machines under 1GHz and we have not tested
it on Celeron or Duron processors.

There are lots of users out there using ACID, but I suspect if you ask them, they are running processors north of 1GHz
and that most of them are running later vintage processors from Intel and AMD.

If you want to continue using old motherboards with slower clock speeds and old low end processors, then you have to
expect these kinds of issues.

Steve
WA6ZFT

Hi Steve,

I have choppiness problems, too, as I've mentioned in threads in the past.
I hacked chan_usbaudio.c slightly -and- turned OFF RADIO_RELAX and have
radically improved results--almost no chop at all...I haven't encountered
the statpost issue since I'm not sending out updates yet. I also had
ugly timer issues with my fastest box. Going to a 2.6.30.5 kernel and the
hi-res timer and patching zaptel/kernel/ztdummy.c fixed this.

I'm running recent boxes--one is a Athlon64X2 4400+, a second is an A64X2
6000+. They're both MSI motherboards. One is ATI chipset, the other is
NVIDIA. I've also used slower (Single core 32bit Athlon 2800+, VIA
chipset) machines in the past with the same exact problems. And, all the
boards have different network adapters. I'm even running 3ware RAID 1 on
one of the boxes. ...Note also that I'm running MANY of these boxes (well
over 100!) in production using linux at my company--several even running
the asterisk PBX software...Never any problems at all.

Also, if I use various linux utilities to read/write the CM108 audio
device directly, I've not had any dropped/chopped audio. I realize this is
a different scenario from how audio is handled by asterisk, but, it leads
me to believe that there isn't any systemic problem with my
linux/hardware/USB config.

Thanks in advance!

73, David kb4fxc

···

_______________________________________________
App_rpt-users mailing list
App_rpt-users@qrvc.com
http://qrvc.com/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt-users

[Jsuter]

From: app_rpt-users-bounces@qrvc.com [mailto:app_rpt-users-
bounces@qrvc.com] On Behalf Of Steve Gladden
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 8:58 AM
To: Jim Duuuude
Cc: app_rpt mailing list; sales@qrvc.com
Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt &
usbradio audio popping problem.

Jim Duuuude wrote:
> if you dont mind, I would like to ask a completely left-field
question.
>
> What kind of ethernet hardware do you have on your system, and what
kind of
> bus controller (northbridge, etc). Back in the really old days when
we first
> were using Zapata Telephony cards, we found a number of drivers that
had, well
> lets say, some serious issues in Linux.
>
> Thanks for humoring me.
>
> JIM WB6NIL
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
>
>> Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:27:01 -0500
>> From: steve@michiganbroadband.com
>> To: sales@qrvc.com
>> CC: app_rpt-users@qrvc.com
>> Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt &
usbradio audio popping problem.
>>
>> Stephen Rodgers wrote:
>>
>>> Steve Gladden wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Hi David.. it's not a terribly loud popping it's right with the
normal audio
>>>> levels
>>>> It really sounds like 'holes' in the processing small abrupt
dropouts of the
>>>> stream..
>>>> Very random in timing maybe 5-15 hits per minute when I key the
radio with
>>>> PL..
>>>>
>>>> Seems to more frequently happen on/around the CWID but still is
happening
>>>> very randomly.
>>>>
>>>> CPU utilization is ~10% while radio keyed producing PL and CWID..
>>>> Have radio continuously keyed (no actual radio) and CDID beacon
going every
>>>> minute.
>>>>
>>>> 5-15 'dropouts' per minute.
>>>>
>>>> I've tried to isolate it by throwing different tasks at the
hardware/CPU to
>>>> see if the audio dropouts
>>>> Would increase or not during heavy CPU utilization or maxing out
IO on
>>>> network hard drives etc.
>>>>
>>>> Checked alsa mixer to make sure there were no open turned way up
audio
>>>> inputs or mic monitor turned on..
>>>> Turned down all input levels and this had no effect on the
dropouts either.
>>>>
>>>> One thing I have not tried (but will not matter) is to hook a usb
HDD to the
>>>> usb port and give the usb controller
>>>> Itself some activity besides the usbradio port and see if this
impacts the
>>>> issue.
>>>>
>>>> This might tend to point me back to the usb controller itself
having an
>>>> issue..
>>>>
>>>> I should also try a PCI external USB card on the motherboard and
give it
>>>> it's own interrupt.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> From: David McGough [mailto:kb4fxc@inttek.net]
>>>> Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 6:57 PM
>>>> To: Steve Gladden
>>>> Cc: app_rpt-users@qrvc.com
>>>> Subject: Re: [App_rpt-users] First experience with ACID app_rpt &
usbradio
>>>> audio popping problem.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi Steve,
>>>>
>>>> What exactly do you mean by "popping"?? Is it a loud POP! like a
drum or
>>>> is it a momentary audio drop-out or choppiness??
>>>>
>>>> The reason I ask about choppiness is that I've experienced this
issue.
>>>> But, I've never had loud POPS! ....
>>>>
>>>> 73, David kb4fxc
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Short version:
>>>>>
>>>>> *Installed ACID
>>>>> *Have audio popping problem with USB transmit (output) audio.
>>>>> *I'm not surprised didn't expect it to work perfectly first
attempt.
>>>>> *Only tried one combinarion of hardware/cpu/motherboard so far..
I need
>>>>> to try other motherboards/CPUs.
>>>>> * Tried 3 different USB devices and ports.
>>>>> * played with moving interrupts disabling motehrboard built-on
hardware
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> etc.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> * CPU runs at about 10% while USB radio is active..
>>>>> * Loading PC heavily by running gzip -9 seti@home Lots of disk
access
>>>>> lots of network activity seem to have zero impact on the popping
>>>>> frequentness.
>>>>>
>>>>> * I'd like to know if anyone else here has had this or similar
problems
>>>>> with consistent audio from the USB device (CM-108) and what they
may
>>>>> have done
>>>>> to make it work better.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Long Version:
>>>>>
>>>>> I gave it a go and went the 'easy' route just to get started..
>>>>> I ended up trying it out on that 1.1Ghz AMD Duron CPU rack mount
server..
>>>>> I must say I'm extremely excited & please with this software..
>>>>> But it would be too good to be true if it all just worked first
try..
>>>>> and of course would take all the 'fun'
>>>>> out of getting it to work..
>>>>> Ok enough small talk (haha)
>>>>> Here's what I have going on:
>>>>>
>>>>> Everything works except I am getting intermittent audio popping
in the
>>>>> audio output of the USB sound device.
>>>>> VERY intermittent maybe about 3-4 'pops' every minute on
average.. 10 at
>>>>> most sometimes.. and other times several minutes go by without a
'pop'.
>>>>> It seems to mostly occur during the CW ID beacon which I have
going
>>>>> every minute..
>>>>> The pops that are heard only happen when the 'transmitter' is
active
>>>>> sending PL or CW ID or PLAYBACK...
>>>>> My test arrangement has "radio key" running to produce continuous
PL and
>>>>> occasional audio popping.
>>>>> There is no radio actually hooked up yet.
>>>>>
>>>>> OK will talk about the hardware a bit.. and probably worse case
scenario
>>>>> here due to an 'all in one' motherboard..
>>>>> It's a MSI 6378 'budget' Athlon board.. everything built on.
>>>>> Has USB 1.1 *NOT 2*
>>>>> I don't know/think this matters for a sound device.
>>>>>
>>>>> Here's all of the things I have tried all of which have
absolutely no
>>>>> effect on the intermittent popping...
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. Disabling everything not needed on motherboard including
ethernet for
>>>>> test..
>>>>> ethernet + usb share an interrup line and there is no ability to
>>>>> re-route this in the bios
>>>>> so I turned off the ethernet on the motherboard for testing.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2. Carefully monitor CPU during audio pops running 'top' around
20
>>>>> updates per second (this alone takes more CPU load than asterisk
>>>>> /app_rpt + usb radio.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> 3. On this motherboard the USB controller and ethernet share a
PCI
>>>>> interuupt line and you cannot change it.
>>>>> I've tried disabling the built on ethernet and still get the
popping..
>>>>> I've also flood and large pinged the machine which genreates huge
>>>>> numbers of interrups from the ethernet chip and this has no
effect on
>>>>> the popping..
>>>>>
>>>>> 4. Tried other USB fobs with same chipset.
>>>>> Created various types of heavy system activity to see if it has
any
>>>>> impact on the popping heavy disk use hevy network use and heavy
vga use
>>>>> (text mode)
>>>>> moving interrupts (changing them) on the motherboard.. getting
usb
>>>>> controller onto a different interuupt (ethernet ends up on same).
>>>>>
>>>>> 5. Measured and scoped 5V output on USB to be sure 'popping'
sound is
>>>>> not coming from 5V power supply.
>>>>>
>>>>> 6. Am really looking to hear what some others experience has been
with
>>>>> this..
>>>>> what works and what does not?
>>>>> The popping very much sounds like an interrupt issue or some kind
of
>>>>> issue where the task of sending and audio stream is completely
dropped
>>>>> for something else
>>>>> and then resumed leaving lots of holes heard as pops in the
output stream.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> This is reported occasionally, but I've never experienced it.
>>>
>>> Given what you've tried already, I'd try a different motherboard.
>>>
>>> Also, remove any usb hobs if you are using one.
>>>
>>>
>>> Steve
>>> WA6ZFT
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Hello David... I *may* also be on to something here as I've been
able to
>> also determine that the audio pops are occuring ALWAYS
>> While app_rpt is doing it's statpost routine! updating stats via the
web.
>>
>> I set te statpost address to something local on the LAN for now just
for
>> testing but I get the same audio pops whether just on the
>> LAN or if it's statposting out to the internet.
>>
>> The popping definitely happening at the time that app_rpt is sending
>> HTTP out..
>> The popping never happens during other access to-from the ethernet
or
>> during IAX interchanges between asterisk and the world..
>> Seems to be only when app_rpt is stat posting...
>> Dave I think you are certainl correct about the issue being within
app_rpt.
>> I'm sure the stat posting is not the only issue but I can duplicate
the
>> problem 100% by seeing the popping every time app_rpt
>> sends out HTTP.
>>
>> You may have already found that app_rpt does the 'droppouts' with a
ton
>> of other activities... not just stat posting like I am currently
>> pointing out...
>>
>> Might be a start to something though... since it's duplicatable
here.
>>
>> Note: I've not figured out how to manually make it statpost.. I just
>> turend up the debug to 7 and waited for it to say it was statposting
>> also looking at the ethernet and see the HTTP packets go out at same
>> time dropous are ocurring.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> This message has been scanned for viruses and
>> dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
>> believed to be clean.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> App_rpt-users mailing list
>> App_rpt-users@qrvc.com
>> http://qrvc.com/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt-users
>>
>
>
I'm on test machine #4 now this one is a P3 @450Mhz on an Asus P2-99
Motherboard.. no built on video audio or ethernet..
A bit of a slower CPU on this one the audio dropouts are about the same
(just as bad no worse) Turning off the stat post
by commenting out the two lines makes a HUGE difference for the better
but still not perfect as there is still some dropouts..
This is totally stock off the ACID install after all updates & setup.

I still (badly) need to try David's suggested source and re-compile
fixes and see what I get.
I've certainly found that the stat post part of app_rpt is really
making
the problem show up when it is active.
Besides needing to apply & try David's fixes I am still at the same
time
trying this on a variety of different hardware..
So far ACID out of the box has had the same issue of 4 different
systems.

On this last attempt with a P2-99 I've gotten away from the VIA
chipsets
and pretty much all of the on motherboard problem/frustration causers.
This Motherboard uses Intel NB and SB.. A copy of the manual for this
one is at: http://stuff.michiganbroadband.com/p2-99.pdf

You're currently describing why I don't use Asterisk for my PBX - it seems
to desire an outrageous amount of dedicated resources to make work
consistently. I find FreeSwitch seems to work 99% better in these
situations, but FreeSwitch's repeater control module (fs_rpt) is still
incomplete and theres no Echolink or IRLP linking options (yet)

From my own tests I can say Asterisk isn't as much CPU hungry as it is

"consistent performance hungry". Your old P3 is likely fast enough to
handle the job, but when things like disk I/O occur (IDE and SATA drives
*LOVE* 'eating' your machine's performance up during I/O) it just can't keep
up for a few milliseconds, and asterisk doesn't recover well from the
situation.

People tend to throw a lot of CPU at it, because CPU is cheap and easy, and
end up having the same problems. I'm fairly certain $25 worth of surplus
SCSI controller, cable, and disk off ebay would likely cure the largest
problems you're seeing.

Also, while you're Ebaying, treat yourself to a nice Intel 10/100 adapter.
I buy them surplus by the 10 pack, myself. Junk Ethernet adapters (Realtek,
VIA, etc) are a performance-eater under any circumstance.

Good Luck!

JS

···

-----Original Message-----
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> On Wed, 11 Nov 2009, Steve Gladden wrote:

[David_McGough]

<snip>

You're currently describing why I don't use Asterisk for my PBX - it seems
to desire an outrageous amount of dedicated resources to make work
consistently. I find FreeSwitch seems to work 99% better in these
situations, but FreeSwitch's repeater control module (fs_rpt) is still
incomplete and theres no Echolink or IRLP linking options (yet)

>From my own tests I can say Asterisk isn't as much CPU hungry as it is
"consistent performance hungry". Your old P3 is likely fast enough to
handle the job, but when things like disk I/O occur (IDE and SATA drives
*LOVE* 'eating' your machine's performance up during I/O) it just can't keep
up for a few milliseconds, and asterisk doesn't recover well from the
situation.

People tend to throw a lot of CPU at it, because CPU is cheap and easy, and
end up having the same problems. I'm fairly certain $25 worth of surplus
SCSI controller, cable, and disk off ebay would likely cure the largest
problems you're seeing.

Also, while you're Ebaying, treat yourself to a nice Intel 10/100 adapter.
I buy them surplus by the 10 pack, myself. Junk Ethernet adapters (Realtek,
VIA, etc) are a performance-eater under any circumstance.

Good Luck!

JS

Hi Jacob,

Interesting info about freeswitch. I had heard it was out there, but
haven't looked at it. I've had excellent results with asterisk as a PBX
over the last 6 years or so. There were some rough edges to start with, as
expected with any software. We now run/use several asterisk boxes at
different locations for my business; mainly connected to T1's and
providing VoIP gateways, etc. And, we have a few FXS lines here and there
for analog connections to fax machines, etc. All of these boxes are in the
1GHz CPU range, AMD CPU, and cheap ethernet. Aside from somewhat weak
software echo cancellation, they really work great. We went ahead and
deployed hardware/DSP echo cancellation where needed, and that issue was
resolved, too.

Anyway, for us, asterisk is very much a success story....But, we're not
trying to "reinvent" the phone company, either!

73, David kb4fxc

···

On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, Jacob Suter wrote:

_______________________________________________
App_rpt-users mailing list
App_rpt-users@qrvc.com
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[n8lbv]

We've also had 5+ years of great success with asterisk..
I've seen asterisk do a LOT of DSP + Transcoding on one a Pentium400Mhz CPU.
And I've done some DTMF + packet radio DSP on old Pentium 100Mhz and 486 66Mhz Systems.
Which is why I'm not at all sold on the issues with audio being not enough CPU on a 1.1Ghz Duron.
I'm willing to listen & learn..
I'm in the processof trying to abply Dave's fixes (new kernel with precision timer set to 1000Hz) and ztdumyc+usbradio.c hacks and compare that as well..

I'm struggling to being up a working kernel on my first system to test with a fresh compiled kernel of my own..

Meanwhile I'm going to try this on a 3Ghz all Intel much faster and see if the radio drop outs are indeed gone or if they're all still there
and if in the same way or different...

David: I'm still working on trying your fixes..
BTW P3 450Mhz is working *almost perfect* just by turning off that stat post thing..
It's good enough as is to use as a home/test node but not on a production/remote system.
I'm #2586 and on most of the time
Feel free to give us a shout!

And thanks everyone here for all of your help & suggestions..

I can appreciate that in general that everyone out here who has a working system is using much faster system than I have reported to be giving me issues..
And I will be movingto/testing on much faster new systems as well...
I'm just the kind of person who has to know why it's not working properly on a Pentium3 /450 for the fun of it.
So far I've not been able to conclude on my own that a 300 or 400Mhz Pentium2/3 system can't handle this due to not enough CPU.
I think I've done some reasonable test thus far to determine that the CPU is not being even anyhwere remotely close to being maxed out..

The behavior I'm seeing it such that I first suspect faulty programming (that can be fixed) or improper/ non optimal use of precision timer.
Or the way dsp work is being scheduled/prioritized along with the timer interrupt..

In other words it may be written is such a way that it happens to work better on high speed systems.. but when looking at it closely it's not failing
because the CPU is actually maxed out... it's failng because it was written in such a way that a certain amount of work is expected to get done within
one timer routine..

Or the task is not written in a guaranteed to get done without being interrupted by something that should technically could be held off to make the audio stream
the top priority or 'non interruptable' during it's most critical thing it does

I'm not an experienced programmer with this stuff but I'd like to learn and help out when I am able to!
This is a big learning experience for me as far as the opportunity to learn how to do some programming/tweaking in C goes.

Thanks very much for your help & your patience and your listening

Steve

David McGough wrote:

···

On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, Jacob Suter wrote:

<snip>
  

You're currently describing why I don't use Asterisk for my PBX - it seems
to desire an outrageous amount of dedicated resources to make work
consistently. I find FreeSwitch seems to work 99% better in these
situations, but FreeSwitch's repeater control module (fs_rpt) is still
incomplete and theres no Echolink or IRLP linking options (yet)

>From my own tests I can say Asterisk isn't as much CPU hungry as it is
"consistent performance hungry". Your old P3 is likely fast enough to
handle the job, but when things like disk I/O occur (IDE and SATA drives
*LOVE* 'eating' your machine's performance up during I/O) it just can't keep
up for a few milliseconds, and asterisk doesn't recover well from the
situation.

People tend to throw a lot of CPU at it, because CPU is cheap and easy, and
end up having the same problems. I'm fairly certain $25 worth of surplus
SCSI controller, cable, and disk off ebay would likely cure the largest
problems you're seeing.

Also, while you're Ebaying, treat yourself to a nice Intel 10/100 adapter.
I buy them surplus by the 10 pack, myself. Junk Ethernet adapters (Realtek,
VIA, etc) are a performance-eater under any circumstance.

Good Luck!

JS

Hi Jacob,

Interesting info about freeswitch. I had heard it was out there, but
haven't looked at it. I've had excellent results with asterisk as a PBX
over the last 6 years or so. There were some rough edges to start with, as
expected with any software. We now run/use several asterisk boxes at
different locations for my business; mainly connected to T1's and
providing VoIP gateways, etc. And, we have a few FXS lines here and there
for analog connections to fax machines, etc. All of these boxes are in the
1GHz CPU range, AMD CPU, and cheap ethernet. Aside from somewhat weak
software echo cancellation, they really work great. We went ahead and
deployed hardware/DSP echo cancellation where needed, and that issue was
resolved, too.

Anyway, for us, asterisk is very much a success story....But, we're not trying to "reinvent" the phone company, either!

73, David kb4fxc

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