[PlanetCCRMA] Fedora 10 + CCRMA + FFADO RC1 = Happiness

[Chris Nutt]

Mike Mazarick wrote:
> Chris Nutt writes:
>   
>> I used the following kit (for those who have been discussing what kit 
>> works well on the ffado lists):
>>     
>
> - Lenovo Thinkpad Z61p (this has a fast disk and TI chipset 1394 
> (firewire) on board)
> - Focusrite Saffire Pro 26IO Firewire Audio Interface (I love the 
> preamps on this unit - and the company are Linux friendly - magic)
> - Presonus Digimax FS
>
>   
>> This set up was very quick to get up and running and gave me no problems 
>> at all. Install Fed10 - add CCRMA - add FFADO (from CCRMA repos) Great
>>     
> work!
>
> Great!!   Thanks for letting us know about this...
>
> It shows that I am really not keeping up as well as I should.
> The main thing I've picked up is that Firewire is often a problem with
> Linux.
>
> If you were getting a new Firewire port, would you go with 400 or 800 bps?
>   
400 for me - I haven't seen many devices that require (or support) 800. 
400 is plenty for the 16 mono channels I am likely to use. How many do 
you need? I think the 400 spec will support quite a few more then 16.
> How did you get your firewire port to work?   Anything special or difficult?
>   
FC10 is supplied with the new firewire driver so you need to add the old 
one raw1394 to work with ffado (RC1).  Because I have the ccrma repo I 
got it from there.

I think the next major release of ffado will work with the new drivers 
but thats a little way off I think.
> One last question that bleeds over into another thread...
>
> I've been paying some attention to the difficulty with getting a working RT
> kernel with midi
>   
Sorry - can't help here. I haven't been using midi on this setup yet. 
Reports seem to be favourable and I will try it in the next few weeks 
and report back, 2 small kids eat my time like nothing else.
> As a result, I've stuck most recently with FC8 and kernel
> 2.6.24.7-1.rt3.2.fc8.ccrma-rt-x86_64.
>
> However, currently I am running a more recent kernel 2.6.26.8-57.fc8 (no rt
> and no ccrma) and it seems to be running ok (but not serious stress test).
>
> This leads to two questions:
> 1.   Is it time to take the plunge into FC10 (which I was avoiding until the
> bugs got worked out)?
> 2.   I am like many others and will want to use a RT kernel just because
> that's what you always had in the past.
> 	What is the best way to make sure you are using RT, and how do you
> tell it's there?  
> 	For instance, I still use qjackctl to turn on Jack, RealTime is
> still selected in the setup, and the RT light still blinks in the control
> panel even though I'm not using a RT kernel.   It gets even more dicey (much
> like the devices listed above) because the device driver for the particular
> hardware I'm using is not in the support list or included in the Alsa tree.
> It is currently installed 'out of band' by hand.   I am never sure if I am
> getting RT or not.   I surely don't know how to confirm that it is being
> used or not.  Last time I looked, this question led to a very complicated
> path of PCI interrupts and similar 'difficult to figure out and diagnose'
> scenarios.
>
> (here's what I was reading last time I looked)
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/articles/hardware-stability-p2.xml
>
>   It would be wonderful to have some simple thing like a visual indicator
> that said 'RT-on' or 'RT-off' or 'RT-in use'.
>
> -Mike Mazarick
>
>
>
>
>
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