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Date:   Sat, 13 Oct 2018 17:45:22 +0200
Message-ID: <s5htvlpn94d.wl-tiwai@suse.de>
From:   Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>
To:     Mike Brady <mikebrady@eircom.net>
Cc:     Stefan Wahren <stefan.wahren@i2se.com>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
        Eric Anholt <eric@anholt.net>,
        linux-rpi-kernel@lists.infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        Phil Elwell <phil@raspberrypi.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 17/29] staging: bcm2835-audio: Add 10ms period constraint [Resend in plain text...]
In-Reply-To: <D8147FE6-66F2-44FD-BDB2-9E52CCC49C61@eircom.net>
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On Sat, 13 Oct 2018 17:00:32 +0200,
Mike Brady wrote:
> 
> Hi Takashi. My apologies — t turns out I was wrong. My measurements were systematically wrong due to integer truncation going from 64 bit to 32 bit representation.

That relieved me ;)  I thought of starting checking in the next week,
as nothing obvious came to my mind.

In anyways thank you for your testing!


Takashi

> 
> Apologies
> Mike
> 
> > On 11 Oct 2018, at 13:53, Mike Brady <mikebrady@eircom.net> wrote:
> > 
> > Hi Takashi. Just testing out the updated bcm2835 audio driver — it seems that it will underflow at somewhere above about 4410 and below 5120 frames, whereas the present driver is happy down to at least 2000 frames — I haven’t tried lower than about 1700.
> > 
> > Is this change meant to happen?
> > 
> > Regards
> > Mike
> > 
> > 
> >> On 9 Oct 2018, at 16:28, Mike Brady <mikebrady@eircom.net> wrote:
> >> 
> >> Hi Takashi.
> >> 
> >>> On 9 Oct 2018, at 14:44, Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de> wrote:
> >>> 
> >>> On Tue, 09 Oct 2018 15:18:15 +0200,
> >>> Mike Brady wrote:
> >>>> 
> >>>>>> @Mike: Do you want to write a patch series which upstream "interpolate
> >>>>>> audio delay" and addresses Takashi's comments?
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> I would help you, in case you have questions about setup a Raspberry Pi
> >>>>>> with Mainline kernel or patch submission.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> Well, the question is who really wants this.  The value given by that
> >>>>> patch is nothing but some estimation and might be even incorrect.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> PulseAudio won't need it any longer when you set the BATCH flag.
> >>>>> Then it'll switch from tsched mode to the old mode, and the delay
> >>>>> value would be almost irrelevant.
> >>>> 
> >>>> Well, two answers. First, Shairport Sync
> >>>> (https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync) needs it — whenever a
> >>>> packet of audio frames is about to be added to the output queue (at
> >>>> approximately 7.9 millisecond intervals), the delay is checked to
> >>>> try to maintain sync to within a few milliseconds. The BCM2835 audio
> >>>> device is the only one I have yet come across with so much
> >>>> jitter. Whatever other drivers do, the delay they report doesn’t
> >>>> suffer from anything like this level of jitter.
> >>> 
> >>> OK, if there is another application using that delay value, it's worth
> >>> to consider providing a fine-grained value.
> >>> 
> >>>> The second answer is that the veracity of the ALSA documentation
> >>>> depends on it — any application using the ALSA system for
> >>>> synchronisation will rely on this being an accurate reflection of
> >>>> the situation. AFAIK there is really no workaround it if the
> >>>> application is confined to “safe” ALSA
> >>>> (http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/guide-to-sound-apis).
> >>> 
> >>>> On LMKL.org, Takashi wrote:
> >>>> 
> >>>>> Date	Wed, 19 Sep 2018 11:52:33 +0200
> >>>>> From	Takashi Iwai <>
> >>>>> Subject	Re: [PATCH 17/29] staging: bcm2835-audio: Add 10ms period constraint
> >>>> 
> >>>>> [snip]
> >>>> 
> >>>>> That's OK, as long as the computation is accurate enough (at least not
> >>>>> exceed the actual position) and is light-weight.
> >>>> 
> >>>>> [snip]
> >>>> 
> >>>> The overhead is small -- an extra ktime_get() every time a GPU message
> >>>> is sent -- and another call and a few calculations whenever the delay
> >>>> is sought from userland.
> >>>> 
> >>>> At 48,000 frames per second, i.e. approximately 20 microseconds per
> >>>> frame, it would take a clock inaccuracy of roughly
> >>>> 20 microseconds in 10 milliseconds -- 2,000 parts per million — to
> >>>> result in an inaccurate estimate. 
> >>>> Crystal or resonator-based clocks typically have an inaccuracy of
> >>>> 10s to 100s of parts per million.
> >>>> 
> >>>> Finally, to see the effect of the absence and presence of this
> >>>> interpolation, please have a look at this:
> >>>> https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/issues/1026#issuecomment-415746016,
> >>>> where a downstream version of this fix was being discussed.
> >>> 
> >>> I'm not opposing to the usage of delay value.  The attribute is
> >>> provided exactly for such a purpose.  It's a good thing (tm).
> >>> 
> >>> The potential problem is, however, rather the implementation: it's
> >>> using a system timer for interpolation, which is known to drift from
> >>> the actual clocks.  Though, one may say that in such a use case, we
> >>> may ignore the drift since the interpolation is so narrow.
> >> 
> >> Yes, that was my thought. I guess another thing in its favour is that this audio device will always
> >> be in partnership with a processor as part of an SoC, so it will always be likely to have a reasonably
> >> accurate clock.
> >> 
> >>> But another question is whether it should be implemented in each
> >>> driver level.  The time-stamping is basically a PCM core
> >>> functionality, and nothing specific to the hardware, especially when
> >>> it's referring to the system timer.
> >> 
> >> That’s a fair point. I don’t know what is done in other drivers, but can only report that with one possible exception,
> >> the DACs used with Shairport Sync by many end users report well-behaved delay figures, certainly to within two microseconds. I’m afraid I don’t know how they do it.
> >> 
> >>> e.g. you can think in a different way, too: we may put a timestamp at
> >>> each hwptr update, and pass it as-is, instead of updating the
> >>> timestamp at each position query.  This will effectively gives the
> >>> accurate position-timestamp pair, and user-space may interpolate as it
> >>> likes, too.
> >> 
> >> That’s not a bad idea, and I might take it up on the alsa-devel mailing list, as you suggest.
> >> 
> >>> In anyway, if *this* kind of feature needs to be merged, it's
> >>> definitely to be discussed with the upstream.  So, if you're going to
> >>> merge that sort of path, please keep Cc to alsa-devel ML.
> >> 
> >> In the meantime, would you think that the balance of convenience lies with this interpolation scheme? (Finally, I have a patch ready….)
> >> Regards
> >> Mike
> >> 
> >>> 
> >>> thanks,
> >>> 
> >>> Takashi
> >> 
> > 
>