Topic: AMD actual kernel seems to have buggy fireface 800 support -> help?

Hello,

I'm new to this forum and hope not to break the rules.
I have a working LINUX system with ffado, jack, Ardour, using a ff800. Due to higher processing demands I tried to chenge to a Ryzen processor. Everything on the same system image runs out of the box on the Ryzen, except the FF800.
I tried:
-lsmod finds my TI firewire card
-ffado-test ListDevices lists the RME fireface 800
-ffado-test Discover finds the ff800 but freezes directly in the process
-ffado-mixer says it can't talk to to jack server through DBUS
-qjackctrl says, it can't start the server.
-I found relating infos on https://lore.kernel.org/linux-rt-users/ … ad.org/T/, which describes exactly my situation, but there seems to be no actual solution. I tried older versions aof avlinux (2020-05-10) but had the same issues.
Is there anybody around who knows how to get around this?

Re: AMD actual kernel seems to have buggy fireface 800 support -> help?

Hello, again,

Out of desperation I wanted to be able to debug the stuff now. My first trial was to build ffado from source. I had to remove the original ffado installed by package and built and installed using the actual download (2.4.4).
The result was, that immediately things were staring to work, although I didn’t use the debug version. That would have been the second step, but -up to now- was not necessary. I was able to start jack with ffado and a buffer size of 32 at 3 buffers. I started ardour and were able to use it as usual. It seems, that the ffado build in the MXE packages is not compatible with my Ryzen while the self-built ffado is.
After a while the audio became crackly and I looked up the messages. No surprise, there were plenty of xruns. To my astonishment, after another period of time, the crackling became less and vanished. Then again crackling, followed by times with brilliant audio. This to me sounds like time bases slowly drifting against each other. I will hunt down this problem as a next step.
But hooray, the general setup is working with my new killer machine. Plenty of power, two test channels in stereo with a plethora of plugins in each channel, some VCA and foldback strips to experiment with. The result: 8% DSP usage. That’s what I wanted to see.

3 (edited by MFS90 2024-05-10 02:13:49)

Re: AMD actual kernel seems to have buggy fireface 800 support -> help?

hauseru wrote:

Hello, again,

Out of desperation I wanted to be able to debug the stuff now. My first trial was to build ffado from source. I had to remove the original ffado installed by package and built and installed using the actual download (2.4.4).
The result was, that immediately things were staring to work, although I didn’t use the debug version. That would have been the second step, but -up to now- was not necessary. I was able to start jack with ffado and a buffer size of 32 at 3 buffers. I started ardour and were able to use it as usual. It seems, that the ffado build in the MXE packages is not compatible with my Ryzen while the self-built ffado is.
After a while the audio became crackly and I looked up the messages. No surprise, there were plenty of xruns. To my astonishment, after another period of time, the crackling became less and vanished. Then again crackling, followed by times with brilliant audio. This to me sounds like time bases slowly drifting against each other. I will hunt down this problem as a next step.
But hooray, the general setup is working with my new killer machine. Plenty of power, two test channels in stereo with a plethora of plugins in each channel, some VCA and foldback strips to experiment with. The result: 8% DSP usage. That’s what I wanted to see.

Please teach me how you install FFADO. In details. I got the same problems with my FF800
I download FFADO 2.4.8 but cannot understand how to install it. READ ME inside the .tgz dosen't help much to mee.
On their website install instructions is like Enigma code to me too.
Please help me to solve my problem.

4 (edited by maggie33 2024-05-13 05:05:01)

Re: AMD actual kernel seems to have buggy fireface 800 support -> help?

Please teach me how you install FFADO. In details.


There is no all-in one, general, click'n run procedure for linux systems.
Without any additional information, no one could help you.
If you provide more information(which linux distro, which architecture), maybe I could help out. It shouldnt be very hard...

Thus, i do not own a FF800 or use Firewire, i was just able to compile and install the 2.4.8 version on a vm.

I took 10 Minutes to try it out for you.

BTW - The simplest way would be by using a package manger, like apt f. ex on debian based distros.

sudo apt search ffado

should give you all the tools...

I tried via

sudo apt install ffado* libffado2

This installs v 2.4.7. and all relevant tools. And as i see, there should not be any relevant changes to 2.4.8:

Changes since FFADO 2.4.7:

Make various mixer modules work under Python 3.10 and later: Presonus Firebox, Presonus FP10, Presonus Inspire1394 and Yamaha Go.

Deal with the removal of SafeConfigParser in Python 3.12.

Anyhow, i also downloaded 2.4.8, removed (as suggested in the redme all 2.4.7 stuff before) and installed the dependancies first, as described in readme:

Packages for building on Debian/Ubuntu distributions are installed with:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion scons libxml++2.6-dev \
               libiec61883-dev libdbus-1-dev libdbus-c++-bin \
               libdbus-c++-dev libconfig++-dev pyqt5-dev-tools \
               python3-dbus.mainloop.pyqt5 pyqt5-sip

pyqt5-sip was not found, but should not be necessary.

then, i ran scons in the extracted 2.4.8 dir and it gave me an error:

support/tools/ffado-diag --static > support/tools/ffado-diag/static_info.txt
sh: 1: support/tools/ffado-diag: Permission denied
scons: *** [support/tools/ffado-diag/static_info.txt] Error 126
scons: building terminated because of errors.

Although, i checked rwx permissions, seemed not to compile. But i tried to do it directly via:

scons support/tools/ffado-diag

....
scons: done reading SConscript files.
scons: Building targets ...
building 'support/tools/ffado-diag' from 'support/tools/ffado-diag.in'
scons: done building targets.

et voila... have fun ;-)

Edit: And keep in Mind from readme(!!!):

NOTE: In order to build jackd with ffado support, you have 
to install libffado before you build jackd. The backend to use in jackd is
"firewire".
“Do It For Her”
My Gear: Bontempi Magic light Keyboard

Re: AMD actual kernel seems to have buggy fireface 800 support -> help?

Latest Linux Mint
AMD x64

i have try to install scon scons and pyqt5. But always have some errors in the terminal.
I can't tell what exact because for now i forced to come back to Win10 (i can't lose time on guessing)
When i get another SDD for proper dual boot i will try to beat this problem again.

Once i try i my FF800 working on Mint. Reaper see all I/O but ALSA driver in Qjack only.
So there's a lot of xruns and no system apps audio.
How can i force my FF works with Qjack and have system audio same time?
I mean, i need audio in Reaper and Firefox audio same time.

Re: AMD actual kernel seems to have buggy fireface 800 support -> help?

You would have better asked "how can i install scons and pyqt5" instead of "Please teach me how you install FFADO. In details.".
"now i forced to come back to Win10 (i can't lose time on guessing) ...  when.. i will try to beat this problem again."
-> Kidding???

Can't loose time on people, asking questions about systems they have not setup, and can't loose time for solving their own problems.

“Do It For Her”
My Gear: Bontempi Magic light Keyboard

Re: AMD actual kernel seems to have buggy fireface 800 support -> help?

That crown is too big for your head, son.