[pulseaudio-discuss] 'Failed to find a working profile' for firewire sound devices

[Takashi Sakamoto]

David,

I tried your idea with my devices:
1. $ LANG=C pulseaudio -vvvv --log-time=1  > ~/pulseverbose.log 2>&1
2. plug-in devices (repeat)
3. $ aplay/arecord -L

All of my devices are detected automatically.

multichannel_asound.log
http://ubuntuone.com/1auA1GLYMGIYwkZjMrAglE

multichannel_pulseverbose.log
http://ubuntuone.com/5K0dXIY1S5TG3hA4e9NkyS

$ cat /proc/asound/cards
  0 [F410           ]: BeBoB - FW 410
                       M-AUDIO FW 410 (id:2, rev:1), GUID 
000d6c01000af510 at fw1.0, S400
  1 [Solo           ]: BeBoB - FW Solo
                       M-Audio FW Solo (id:144, rev:0), GUID 
000d6c0b00c256a4 at fw2.0, S400
  2 [Audiophile     ]: BeBoB - FW Audiophile
                       M-Audio FW Audiophile (id:13, rev:1), GUID 
000d6c03002b7e2e at fw3.0, S400
  3 [GO46           ]: BeBoB - GO46
                       YAMAHA GO46 (id:12, rev:1), GUID 00a0de00000283e7 
at fw4.0, S400
  4 [AudioFirePre8  ]: Fireworks - AudioFirePre8
                       Echo Digital Audio AudioFirePre8 v5.8, GUID 
0014860a5b6bdb9b at fw5.0, S400
  5 [AudioFire4     ]: Fireworks - AudioFire4
                       Echo Digital Audio AudioFire4 v5.5, GUID 
0014860f5a616e83 at fw6.0, S400
  6 [FCA202         ]: OXFW - FCA202
                       Behringer FCA202 (OXFW970 0104), GUID 
00156402009a70d8 at fw7.0, S400

When I playback with 2ch application, then the samples are going to 
every available channels.

And I mind that PulseAudio tries the same times as the number of 
settings in multichannels.conf. Each trial call snd_pcm_prepare() in the 
end of snd_pcm_hw_params().

This is a bit problem for the devices because the drivers start stream 
when snd_pcm_prepare() is called.

There are some devices which are not designed to start/stop streams so 
frequently. If possible, I want to reduce the time to start/stop stream.

There are some devices which need much time to start stream (300-600 
msec). So with such device, PulseAudio need much time to finish its 
detection.

In theory, I must hide these quirks against user-land. But considering 
user-land driver (FFADO), I cannot make the drivers to keep streams 
opened...

 > ...but we might want a better match than just "firewire" in order not to
 > catch the firewire speakers (if they have normal alsa mixers instead of
 > hwdep control).

Firewire speakers are just three models.
(Vendor ID/Model ID)
iSight:  0x000a27:0x000010
Griffin: 0x001292:0x00f970
Lacie:   0x00d04b:0x00f970

So we can write udev rules for them to distinguish from the others. 
Please refer to '60-ffado.rules'.


Regards

Takashi Sakamoto