[pulseaudio-discuss] Saffire Pro 26 IO Restarting Issue

[Takashi Sakamoto]

Hi,

On Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 12:49:19PM +0000, ackolonges fds wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I was wondering if there might be anyone on here that could give me any
> pointers in getting my Focusrite Saffire Pro 26 i/o interface working with
> Linux via FFADO?
> 
> It's a new desktop PC (Ryzen 5 2600, 8GB RAM), dual booting Windows 10 and
> Ubuntu 18.10, with a PCI Express, Texas Instruments XIO2213 Firewire card.
> 
> I have tested this Saffire interface successfully on a MacBook Pro (it was
> plug and play), and also on this very desktop computer in Windows 10.
> However, when the interface is connected in Ubuntu 18.10, it repeatedly
> and periodically resets itself about 10-15 seconds after booting up, in a
> loop. If I run ffado-dbus-server while it's booting, it connects
> successfully to the interface, and quickly running FFADO mixer afterwards
> lets me see the controls available, for a short time until the interface
> resets itself, cutting all the connections.
> 
> Has anybody here ever heard of this kind of issue before? Or perhaps
> someone may have some ideas that might aid in troubleshooting the issue?
> 
> Thanks so much for any advice you may have,

In case of Focusrite Saffire Pro I/O 10 and 26, a combination of ALSA bebob
driver and pulseaudio brings this problem due to quirk of these two
models reported in bugzilla.kernel.org[1].

I've already committed a solution and it was merged to pulseaudio[2],
however it has never included into any releases of pulseaudio at present.
Therefore you can see this issue on any desktop environment in released
distribution such as the latest Ubuntu.

You can avoid this issue by two handy solutions at a quick glance:
1. suppress pulseaudio to handle your device
2. suppress your system to load ALSA bebob driver

For solution 1, it's the best way to edit 90-pulseaudio.rules in your
system.
$ systemctl --user stop pulseaudio.service pulseaudio.socket
$ sudo nano /lib/udev/rules.d/90-pulseaudio.rules
(modify the above file according to my patch[2].)
$ systemctl --user start pulseaudio.service pulseaudio.socket

For solution 2, it's the easiest way to add ALSA bebob driver to
blacklist.
$ sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-bebob.conf
(add entry of 'blacklist snd-bebob')
(then unplug and plugin your device)

Sorry for the inconvenience.

[1] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=199365
[2] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/commit/37358e42c49abe3d83b344452749461b70fdc80f


Regards

Takashi Sakamoto