bizarre crash on jaguar + M-audio Firewire 410
bizarre crash on jaguar + M-audio Firewire 410
- Subject: bizarre crash on jaguar + M-audio Firewire 410
- From: Richard Dobson <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 02:27:13 +0000
Hello,
I have been using a simple file player app (command-line) based on portaudio. It
has hitherto seemed to work fine on both Jaguar and Panther; in the latter case
(iMac) rendering multi-channel files through the 410.
However, I recently copied the program to an iMac running Jaguar, and all was
well with my soundfiles at 44100. However, playing a soundfile at 48000 not only
failed with an almost hung program (repeated Ctrl-Cs eventually stopped it); it
managed to bring down the wqhole machine. Rtrying the program with a 44100 file
that had previously rendered cleanly failed; and merely trying to open
Preferences/Sound caused a system crash of the "your computer needs to be
restarted variety", something which until this moment I had never seen before.
Most bizarrely, this failure has managed to survive both reboots, and
un-installing and reinstalling the 410 driver, and I am still unable to get the
410 working when I start up the jaguar machine.
I have managed to narrow down the problem on my Panther machine: it arises when
the 410's sample rate is lower than that of the file I try to play.
E.G:
410 set to 44100: playing 44100 file succeeds; playing a 48000 file crashes.
410 set to 48000: playing both 44100 and 48000 works.
Happily Panther seems more forgiving than Jaguar; but not without two reboots
and an uninstall/reinstall cycle of the 410 software.
NB: currently I have to run Metro to do this; I have not found any other
programs that enable me to change the hardware srate, and needless to say the
M-Audio software itself does not give me this option - its sampel rate display
is 100% read-only.
It would seem there is some bug in my command-line program - fair enough, it is
an early port of PortAudio to CoreAudio, and bugs are always likely to arise
when developing audio programs. But is OS X/CoreAudio really meant to be this
flaky, that even after reboots, etc, the 410 cannot be started up properly?
Note that this is not even when actually playing a file - simply trying to open
preferences/Sound instantly provokes the crash. What on earth can be lingering
in the system to do this, that can survive a reboot, with a Firewire device that
has also been power-cycled? Is this a CoreAudio problem or an M-audio problem,
or both? The Jaguar machine is in a University Studio, and is unlikely to be
upgraded to Panther in the short term. But as I have described, even Panther is
vulnerable to the same problem. It is not realistic to try debugging/developing
the program, or any other for that matter, if I am going to hit this Tsunami of
a crash each time I run my program.
Any advice will be greatly appreciated as to how to get the 410 reinitialized
properly on the Jaguar machine; all efforts so far have failed.
I need a custom file player as I need to add B-Format decoding, and the use of
my own soundfile library that supports a custom file format. Otherwise, I would
happily settle for playAudioFile.
Other symptoms on Panther: viewing the config in HALLab, the 410 settings show
the IOPRoc format as (only) 24bit (both input and output); whereas it should
read 32bit float. Oddly, the drop-down boxes do not offer the 32bit or any other
option; when the 410 is cleanly working, of course a large list of options is
available.
I would also settle for being able to modify the "sfplay" utility; but that is a
story for a separate post...
RIchard Dobson
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