Echo Driver 32 or 64bit?

[rothchild]

I've donated the old studio box to a friend and we're trying to get it running in his new shed studio. It's an intel dp965lt motherboard with a core duo processor and 4 gigs of ram.

I've also passed on my old echo layla soundcards with it (a pair of them). We've installed AV Linux (64bit) and Reaper and in terms of software etc it seems to be working, but I'm at somethign of a loss as to how to get the echo cards working - I can see that the relevant package with the firmware / driver for them is installed but I'm not seeing them returned as available drivers (and more upsettingly when I probe the PCI buss I can't see them returned there either).

So I'm left with a couple of questions to help direct my trouble shooting.

1. Does it matter if we're running 32 or 64bit OS? This stuff seems to matter in the windows world but I'm not sure if it does in the same way in linux.

2. Does anyone know if the linux Echo drivers are multiclient? Is the problem that we've got 2 of them in there?

Any advice from anyone with either experience, or knowledge, to help resurrect this machine and let us get on with tracking some drums gratefully received!

[Glennbo]

Unlike Windows, you don't install drivers for things like audio cards. I previously used two M-Audio Delta 2496 cards, and to make both of them work as one 4 input 4 output device I had to use JACK and it's patchbay connect the second card. Then in REAPER I used JACK as the audio interface.

Using the native ASIO I could select one of the two cards and that worked fine, but to make both work I had to use JACK. It was a couple of years ago and I'm using a USB audio device now, but this thread might have some info that translates to your Layla cards.

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=210218

[rothchild]

Ok, no driver per-se but there is a firmware bundle for the echo cards. Is it safe to assume from what you're saying that there is no 32/64 bit divide in terms of addressing cards in the PCI buss?

https://wiki.debian.org/echoaudio

When I do lspci (as advised in the thread linked) I can't see the motorolas as I'm apparently supposed to

PCI: 1057:1801 Motorola DSP56301 Digital Signal Processor

I notice in that thread you make mention of shared IRQs is this an issue in linux too, do I need to try them in some differrent slots on the M/B?

[Glennbo]

Originally Posted by rothchild

Ok, no driver per-se but there is a firmware bundle for the echo cards. Is it safe to assume from what you're saying that there is no 32/64 bit divide in terms of addressing cards in the PCI buss?

https://wiki.debian.org/echoaudio

When I do lspci (as advised in the thread linked) I can't see the motorolas as I'm apparently supposed to

PCI: 1057:1801 Motorola DSP56301 Digital Signal Processor

I notice in that thread you make mention of shared IRQs is this an issue in linux too, do I need to try them in some differrent slots on the M/B?

From the Wiki page you linked it says the drivers are already in the Linux kernel.

The echoaudio ALSA driver supports several sound cards produced by Echo Digital Audio Corporation. It is part of the Linux kernel since version 2.6.18.

As for the IRQs/PCI slots I used for my two Delta cards, I made those choices back when I was running Windows. If you have the motherboard manual it will tell you what IRQs are shared on each of the PCI slots. I just chose the ones that weren't shared with video or other things that might be active all the time.

In REAPER if you select ALSA do you see one of your cards on the dropdown for input and output device?

[rothchild]

Thanks, yes I know the drivers are in rolled in to the kernel, and the alsa firmware package is also installed by default in AV Linux.

I think all of this affirms to me that the right way forward is to take all but one card out and see if I can get that working first and then scale up from there.

If it still doesn't work then I'll try re-installing with 32bit just in case.

At the moment none of the audio subsystems can see the cards and as I mentioned LSPCI doesn't even show it as being on the PCI buss.

[Glennbo]

Originally Posted by rothchild

Thanks, yes I know the drivers are in rolled in to the kernel, and the alsa firmware package is also installed by default in AV Linux.

I think all of this affirms to me that the right way forward is to take all but one card out and see if I can get that working first and then scale up from there.

If it still doesn't work then I'll try re-installing with 32bit just in case.

At the moment none of the audio subsystems can see the cards and as I mentioned LSPCI doesn't even show it as being on the PCI buss.

When I was using two PCI cards, I was running 64 bit Xubuntu and 64 bit REAPER. I also had to use an RCA cable from the out of one card's spdif to the in of the other, and then slave the second card off of the first one's clock over spdif.

Neither card being seen by any audio system seems weird though. I could see one card maybe not being seated fully in the slot or something, but not two cards. I always used the motherboard's built-in audio for system sound (still do), so my PCI cards weren't being accessed by anything but REAPER.

[rothchild]

Thanks Glennbo,

I think I'll have a chance to go over and have a further experiement with it this evening, so we'll start with just some very basic hardware troubleshooting and then work it up from there.

I may be back with more questions later!

[rothchild]

Hmm still no joy,

Swapped cards about in all the slots available but no dice, also turned off all other peripherals on MB to ensure minimum chance of IRQ sharing.

I did however notice that during the boot sequence it is spotted, but then ignored (there's a boot line that's something like: PCI 7f unknown device ignoring)

Going to work thorugh some of this next time: https://www.alsa-project.org/wiki/Matrix:Module-layla20

Did at least get a Steinberg USB44 up and running so there is at least some progress and we know the audio subsystem is working!

[Glennbo]

Glad you got something to work. What might be worth a try would be to burn a live DVD from some other distros and see if booting from one of them sees the Layla cards. Either that or just get on with what you have working.

[rothchild]

Didn't mention but I also tried live booting the 32bit version and had the same issue (with the same error showing after the POST screen and before grub loads.

As I say, next time I get to go and help him out I'm going to check out the stuff listed on that alsa link.

One sub-question to all this though is that whilst the main pulse mixer window and ALSA can see the USB soundcard, I couldn't seem to do anything with JACK. I will confess that from past experience I find JACK highly unintuitive, so any pointers in this direction will be welcomed!

Edit: Oh yeah, no fear, we're going with what works but that's only 6 inputs, the rig proper is 2 laylas and 2 SMPro8 preamps for 16 ins.

[Glennbo]

Skip using JACK if ALSA works. JACK runs ontop of ALSA, so it's not as close to the actual hardware. I only used JACK when I had two soundcards because it's patchbay could combine them.

[rothchild]

Originally Posted by Glennbo

Skip using JACK if ALSA works. JACK runs ontop of ALSA, so it's not as close to the actual hardware. I only used JACK when I had two soundcards because it's patchbay could combine them.

Ahh, neat thanks! I'm hoping that the alsa echomixer replaces that functionality (monitor controls and the linking of the 2 cards etc)

And I don't need JACK for Carla either?

[Glennbo]

Originally Posted by rothchild

Ahh, neat thanks! I'm hoping that the alsa echomixer replaces that functionality (monitor controls and the linking of the 2 cards etc)

And I don't need JACK for Carla either?

With the Behringer UMC1820 eight input device I use now, I only use ALSA and it works great for audio and midi.

When I was using two M-Audio 2496 PCI soundcards, the only way I could ever get both of them to be accessible to REAPER was to use JACK and it's patchbay. I had to fire up jackd which connected to the soundcards and remembered the patchbay routing I had saved, then I'd fire up REAPER and it would see JACK with four inputs that I could use to record my acoustic drums.