OpenArena Ubuntu 9.10 and so much crackle and freezing

[skyknight]

Hi guys!
I'm SkyKnight from D.o.P. Accademy (ITA), and I'm contributing to the OpenArena Italian web site.
Now, about the issue,
I tried everything, I noticed that there are already two similar post 1 2 but both are missing for some particularly useful for the solution.
I did several tests and Reinstalling Ubuntu 9.10, ALSA and Pulseaudio and problems occurred at the time that Ubuntu use PulseAudio. In fact unlike. Cfg or OpenGL enabled or no or low or high sound quality, since the starting of OpenArena the sound was almost always distorted to such an extent as to be an annoying "crackling". Sometimes it happened that the crackling occurs during the game at a particular moment when even the fluidity of the game was corrupted (Lagging).
Obviously I've already ruled out the possible connection problems. And I've already tried all possible configurations with different libraries suggested to me in previous posts and in other forums. But always seems to be constant Pulseaudio. I confirm that this is often crackling in addition to the freezing of the system at the exit of the game.
If you want details about my system configuration tell me the commands line to input and I'll show you here. Thanks!

[Cacatoes]

Hi and welcome

What if you close pulseaudio ?

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/pulseaudio stop
sudo killall pulseaudio

[sago007]

My solution is to embrace pulseaudio:

Code:

sudo aptitude install libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio

Trying to get rid of pulseaudio creates too many problems. Disable openAL if you still got problems.

but yes, it is a problem.

[skyknight]

Thanks, sago007 and Cacatoes but...
I've done both posibilities and no one works fine.

Well... I purge pulseaudio and install ALSA. The crackle is gone, but now I have another problem. While playing, when run the many sound files, LAG in a way exaggerated. But if I disable all sounds can reach 125 fps. And for me is a miracle because I have never seen more than 80-70 fps more than a year. But logically I can not play without sound. Also now, that I purge Pulseaudio, not have the volume control of ubuntu and by the item System => Preference => Audio I get a window that indicates the expectation of something. I would settle even eliminate the lag because I can control the by terminal the rest of the system.

[Cacatoes]

You may try further to get OpenAL working with pulseaudio, like :
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio#Configuration_of_OpenAL_for_PulseAudio
Maybe these informations are already outdated or don't apply here.

I had that "no soundmixer available" problem too when stopping pulseaudio, the Gnome applet used to display the sound mixer isn't the same for pulseaudio and standard ALSA.

I think I had the issue you mentionned, that is : "lagging" when many sounds were played together ingame, to me it often happened when respawning and had sound stuttering and FPS drop (you may not use the term "lag" if the problem doesn't apply to your internet connection, made me think the problem was with your ping). I disabled OpenAL in game options and things were temporarily fixed ... but since, I changed a few other things meanwhile, like updating my OpenAL library to a more recent one (like Falkland pointed in the other topic) and I think that solved it too.

[Udi]

I think I had the issue you mentionned, that is : "lagging" when many sounds were played together ingame, to me it often happened when respawning and had sound stuttering and FPS drop (you may not use the term "lag" if the problem doesn't apply to your internet connection, made me think the problem was with your ping).

Thanks for that info! This happens to me sometimes when there's too much lightning gun action on the scene, probably caused by sounds, I will disable OpenAL and see if it occurs again. I use Debian Lenny, no PulseAudio here, so it's a pure OpenAL issue I guess.

[skyknight]

You may try further to get OpenAL working with pulseaudio, like :
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio#Configuration_of_OpenAL_for_PulseAudio
Maybe these informations are already outdated or don't apply here.

Thanks Cacatoes, besides teaching me how to frag on-line you made me less ignorant about certain terms. : D
And about your suggestion, I found out I had a very similar job this morning.
First of all I Reinstalling Ubuntu 9.10, run updates and installation of hardware drivers. Then without uninstall PuleAudio I ran these commands:

Code:

$ sudo apt-get install alsa-base alsa-tools alsa-tools-gui alsa-utils alsa-oss linux-sound-base alsamixergui

$ sudo apt-get install esound esound-clients esound-common libesd-alsa0 gnome-alsamixer

$ sudo apt-get install libopenal1

//Here, maybe, this library make that config in /etc/openal/alsoft.conf:
#drivers = alsa,oss,solaris,dsound,winmm,port,pulse,wave
$ sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2debian-all

After that I changed the file entries mynickname.cfg

Code:

//Sound
seta s_alDevice "ALSA Software"
seta s_alDriver "libopenal.so.1"
seta s_useOpenAL "0"
//Network
seta cl_timenudge "-15"
seta rate "20000"
seta snaps "30"
seta cl_packetdups "1"
seta cl_maxPackets "100"
seta com_maxFPS "40"
seta cg_forceModel "1"
//seta cg_perdictItems
seta cg_deferPlayers "1"

and I set the options (from top to bottom) of the setup menu => System

Code:

-on
-off
-off
-off
-off
-on
-off
-off
-on
-off
-on
-on

In graphic:

Code:

-Default
-off
-800x600
-Default
-Vertex Low
-off
-off
-low
-a metà
-16bit
-Bilinear
-off

Sound:

Code:

-High
-Off

It's so strange that setting the sound quality low no problems while in high. However I have now tested three times in the game and only the first time, without having rebooted, I froze the PC. The other times works fine even with an average pan fps in some maps as Oasago2 (30-35).

[Falkland]

First of all I Reinstalling Ubuntu 9.10, run updates and installation of hardware drivers.

Reinstalling all the system :/ ... what a horrific windows inherited attitude :/ ... if you have configuration issue just uninstall the software causing problems and wipe your local settings ( the specific .<hidden_file> in your HOME directory )

BTW , if you have com_maxfps 40 you will never reach 125 fps.

[skyknight]

Reinstalling all the system :/ ... what a horrific windows inherited attitude :/
BTW , if you have com_maxfps 40 you will never reach 125 fps.

Yes, I know, I have long abandoned Windows but still have bad habits, unfortunately. This is the result of what happens when you use Linux on the foundations of windows. Regarding the fps in my nickname.cgf prefer to keep com_maxfps40 a matter of high jump. As with the audio and have an SPF rating without com_maxfps40 inappropriate to jump to the best of my ability.

[rsmith16384]

Also having this problem, I will report my testing so far.

Problem is present with both Ubuntu 9.10 and Mint 8

Problem is present with openal off and sound quality low

Mid game i get crackle followed by no sound

on exit freeze, from which i cannot recover

so far the only way i have been able to fix this is to uninstall pulseaudio \ install esound

dont like this setup as many apps have zero sound following this change or are unreasonably quiet with audio maxed

any help anyone can provide with getting oa to work with a fresh install of ubuntu (pulseaudio enabled) would be greatly appreciated

by the way i am running one of those tiny little atom boards, (too lazy to look up model, but it was built in 2008) with 2gb memory

[kernel panic]

I've got a definite solution: don't use Ubuntu. It's a train wreck. I mean, yeah, it's 2010 and you have problems with sound? Get yourself Debian or OpenSuse or whatever as long as it works.

[Falkland]

I've got a definite solution: don't use Ubuntu. It's a train wreck. I mean, yeah, it's 2010 and you have problems with sound? Get yourself Debian or OpenSuse or whatever as long as it works.

Anyway , pulseaudio has become an explicit gnome desktop dependence.

The solution is to update openal ( by building the latest debian sid source package ) and/or to install libsdl1.2-pulseaudio or libsdl1.2-all.

[kernel panic]

If that solves pulseaudio problems I guess Ubuntu users only have to wait some months for the next release. With a bit of luck, nothing will break in another unrelated area  : D

[Falkland]

If that solves pulseaudio problems I guess Ubuntu users only have to wait some months for the next release.

Probably yes , even if rebuilding a package like openal by deb sources is quite for sure never harmful ( I've done it tons of time also in distribution where the upgrade was not so easy , like in OpenSuse 10.1 ;-)  )

Anyway the problem is that they freezed Karmic distribution to a SID sync that was really not brilliant ( they were in the transition way from Lenny to Squeeze , which is in testing only since a couple of months ) . The way to squeeze has caused a lot of pain to me ( kernel issue , libs issue - including openal : the first one was a transition from libopenal0 to libopenal1 that makes ioquake3 always falling back on SDL sounds ; I finally understood the problem was a ioquake3 cvar pointing to the old lib [ s_alDriver "libopenal.so.0" ] - , xorg issue , etc .... )

And their too short release time makes the rest ( eg upstart which was not included in squeeze till 2 or 3 months ago and anyway after Karmic freeze  , so it is still in init-daemon compatibility in Karmic ).

For their next release ( Lucid Lynx ) they've explicitely asked to Debian developers to release squeeze before Lucid code freeze , but debian developers have already warned that squeeze will be not ready for that date.

As a consequence , since ubuntu devs will not be able to base their new release on a stable debian , they've decided to base it on debian testing instead of unstable.

Who is right and who's wrong here ?

IMHO , not debian so I'd almost agree with you about preferring debian or opensuse to ubuntu , even if I am currently testing Lucid Lynx on a VM and on a real machine and it feels better than every other previous version since the boot process ( they've finally adopted upstart and the system boots in 15 - 20 secs - all services , no boot tune - on the same machine that spends around 1 minute - not all service , optimized boot - on hardy ) . Great improvements also with KMS and the new xorg/radeon driver pair.

With a bit of luck, nothing will break in another unrelated area  : D

Probably yes , this time ;-)

[fromhell]

s_khz 48
snd_restart

try that.

if not
snd_useOpenAL 1 or 0
try those

Crackle can also be caused by disconnected mixer inputs, so mute everything but wave/pcm and master, see if it crackles then.

[kernel panic]

Probably yes , even if rebuilding a package like openal by deb sources is quite for sure never harmful ( I've done it tons of time also in distribution where the upgrade was not so easy , like in OpenSuse 10.1 ;-)  )

Sure, but that's outside what you would expect an end user to do. I myself don't know how to do it 'the Debian way' and would fetch the package from upstream if I needed to, as I did for several other libraries in the past.

You are absolutely right about where the problem comes from. Although I didn't consider that they pulled from sid during the transition time, which yes, was a bit awful. But really, even under normal circumstances you can't expect Ubuntu to be particularly solid. 6 months is never going to be enough time to test what, 20000+ packages? On top of that, Ubuntu policy is not very conservative, quite the opposite, introducing the very new stuff with every release. I'm talking about Pulse, upstart, desktop effects and what not. Then, I don't know how representative this is, but I witnessed how some critical bugs were carried over from one release to the next one without doing much about it.

Debian can't be at fault here, and it doesn't make any sense that they should change their deadlines to suit Ubuntu. Actually, I find it a bit insulting that they made that request. If they want stability perhaps they should think about changing their policies, starting from increasing the ridiculous 6 months release time.

[...]I am currently testing Lucid Lynx on a VM and on a real machine and it feels better than every other previous version since the boot process ( they've finally adopted upstart and the system boots in 15 - 20 secs - all services , no boot tune - on the same machine that spends around 1 minute - not all service , optimized boot - on hardy ) . Great improvements also with KMS and the new xorg/radeon driver pair.

Ah, I really want to update my machine. It's been almost a year I don't touch anything sensitive to avoid any possible breakage. As soon as I finish what I'm doing I'm going to let it swallow everything out there to see whether things have really improved. The other day I installed Debian on a laptop's friend (Ubuntu didn't work very well, not recognising the cd drive to start with) and I really liked the new boot stuff. How does the latest radeon perform as compared to fglrx?

[Falkland]

Sure, but that's outside what you would expect an end user to do. I myself don't know how to do it 'the Debian way' and would fetch the package from upstream if I needed to, as I did for several other libraries in the past.

Not so easy , but not so complicated too :-)

Steps to build the package on Karmic :

- download openal-soft_1.10.622-1.dsc , openal-soft_1.10.622-1.debian.tar.gz, openal-soft_1.10.622.orig.tar.gz  ( http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/o/openal-soft/ ) somewhere
- open a terminal pointing to the dir where those were downloaded
- sudo apt-get install build-essential
- sudo apt-get install build-dep libopenal1
- dpkg-source -x openal-soft_1.10.622-1.dsc
- cd openal-soft*
- dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot

If all the process goes right , you should have the new openal packages ( libs + libs-dev )

EDIT : of course to install them , just use Gdebi or on terminal openened on the dir that contains the new lib,  type sudo dpkg -i libopenal*.deb

You are absolutely right about where the problem comes from. Although I didn't consider that they pulled from sid during the transition time, which yes, was a bit awful. But really, even under normal circumstances you can't expect Ubuntu to be particularly solid. 6 months is never going to be enough time to test what, 20000+ packages? On top of that, Ubuntu policy is not very conservative, quite the opposite, introducing the very new stuff with every release. I'm talking about Pulse, upstart, desktop effects and what not. Then, I don't know how representative this is, but I witnessed how some critical bugs were carried over from one release to the next one without doing much about it.

Debian can't be at fault here, and it doesn't make any sense that they should change their deadlines to suit Ubuntu. Actually, I find it a bit insulting that they made that request. If they want stability perhaps they should think about changing their policies, starting from increasing the ridiculous 6 months release time.

I almost agree with you here , with the exception of the six months release cycle : the Ubuntu stable release cycle is 2 years , not 6 months :-)

6 months is the normal release cycle , infact the latest stable releases was Hardy 8.04 while the next stable will be Lucid 10.04 ;-)

[...] How does the latest radeon perform as compared to fglrx?

Lol ... simply I don't know because I've never used fglrx :-D ... the only thing I know is that the latest proprietary drivers has no support for radeon chips <= r3xx ( or higher ... ) anymore ;-)

[Falkland]

[...] How does the latest radeon perform as compared to fglrx?

Lol ... simply I don't know because I've never used fglrx :-D ... the only thing I know is that the latest proprietary drivers has no support for radeon chips <= r3xx ( or higher ... ) anymore ;-)

Just for reference , there's a page on Xorg about the progress status of the Radeon OSS driver -> http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature

[PopeJo]

offtopic:

How does the latest radeon perform as compared to fglrx?

still no match.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_lts_graphics&num=1

the soon-to-be-ready gallium driver might, or might not be better
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_lts_gallium3d&num=1

lucid ate up 50fps.
flgrx dropped support for my mobility radeon x1400, so I could only choose between radeon and radeonhd - both where buggen in lucid... so I switched back to karmic.


ontopic:
I got sound problems with only some specific programms: openarena, wine programms, alienarena and teamspeak3.
Falkland, do you happen to know if all these issues can be fixed by using a newer openal version?

[Falkland]

ontopic:
I got sound problems with only some specific programms: openarena, wine programms, alienarena and teamspeak3.
Falkland, do you happen to know if all these issues can be fixed by using a newer openal version?

Probably yes , because the standard lucid version is the 1.11.753 but the version 1.12.854 is already in the lucid proposed.

You should try to use SDL sound backend instead and installing libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio before trying a new version of OpenAL.

[PopeJo]

You should try to use SDL sound backend instead and installing libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio before trying a new version of OpenAL.

thx Falkland!
 I did some reading, and here is how I could fix the sound issues, at least with openarena (not with Wine programs): http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=3724.msg32070#msg32070