[Ardour-Dev] zita-a2j and capture alignment

[Ben Bell]

On Sat, Sep 07, 2013 at 03:00:57PM +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> I'm surprised that pcm_multi creates such problems, what it does is 
> a lot simpler than what happens in a2j. If the cards are synced it
> should just work.
I believe there's a long standing issue with alsa todo with assuming that
the interrupt on one card firing means that the buffers are ready on both
cards. Something like that, but there's a long history of problems with
it on this list and other places.

> > 1) How do the -n/-p parameters relate to their counterparts in jack? Should
> >    I be specifying exactly the same -n/-p pair for the closest sync?
> No, there is no required relation between those. For minimal additional
> latency, use a period on the ALSA device that is smaller than the one
OK, great.

> > 2) When I capture a mix of jack driven and zita-a2j driven inputs, the
> >    alighment is out. I don't just mean audio latency, I mean that the
> >    captured regions have different start times. I'm guessing something is
> >    trying to be smart about re-aligning the two sources but it's not
> >    getting it right.
> 
> That is probably what is happening. Zita-a2j doesn't set any latency
> values on its Jack ports, and it should really do that. I'll look 
> into it. Adding a command line option should be easy, and will
> probably solve the practical problem. 
I forget... does it set the hardware flag too? I hacked something to do
that but can't remember if it was alsa_in or zita-a2j,

> Zita-a2j always resamples, it doesn't know that the cards are synced.
I think I vaguely remembering you once wondering out loud about making
an option for disabling resampling. Any chance of that? :)

> The real solution would be a Jack backend that allows more than one
> ALSA device to be used, provided they have the same clock. Then, 
Yes. In the mean time there's the possibility of using two zita-a2j
instances talking to a jack with a dummy back end, but then everything
would be resampling which really does undermine the whole idea of jack
giving sample-accurate recording.