AOS 4.1 update 3 - screeching noise when scrolling large CON: or KCON window

Hi all

Just noticed when scrolling large of text in a large KCON: or CON: window and some sound-playing application is producing sound (Tunenet/MPlayer) the playback screeches/stutters. To reproduce:

start music playback
open new shell
run "iist >> ram:delme" several times
run "type ram:delme"

in vinced window all is well.

Tried on WB screen with compositing and a public screen without compositing.

Is there explanation and/or remedy for this?


Jack

I can't reproduce it, I even turned the volume on my hp +15 dB. I have AmigaOneXE G3 with a FM801 based sound card.

Quote:

A1 G4XE here. VIA audio. Radeon 9000.
And the window should be large (1000x1000)

Well, I have got that one on my SAM440ep mini as well, since I can remember and I am still running 4.1 upd2 (!). Always, when I scroll with my mouse wheel, I get this sound. Thought it was due to bad onboardsound of SAM and/or bad mouse. Never looked close into this issue.

I tried the VIA audio too. Window was CON: 1280 by 1024 px, both frontmost and behind several large windows. Not a glitch. WB uses compositing.

Is that not just noise getting into the VIA's circuitry from the PCI bus? Possibly there's a lot of information being shifted around in the scrolling operation. You get a similar effect on some PCs with built-in soundcards, and on a lot of laptops. Any time you have heavy graphics or drive access you can "hear" the data on the bus...

@Jack

I know! This is horrible!!! And it has never happened before update 3!

It's not only shells that produce it - any larger or repetative graphics operation causes this and it's really sad. Shell, browser, scrolling an image in MultiView, scrolling text in DOpus.

It's a global problem with graphics and audio introduced in update 3.

@Deadalus

This is NOT electrical "noise", this is pure task/interrupt starvation stuttering. And it's really bad too.

The absolute worse effect you get by opening a larger text file in DOpus4's full screen text viewer and click once on the text to make it scroll smoothly. Move your mouse up and down (without holding or clicking any button) while it's scrolling to hear a clear change in the noise.

For me the noise in DOpus text scroller is so bad that you can't even hear what song is currently playing when scrolling. It just scratches insanely much. The music slows down to some unrecognizable slowmotion noise because of the irregular high-frequency stuttering.

A1-XE/G4, Radeon9250, CMI8738-based sound card.

There was never even a slight indication of any such problem with update 2 or any other version. Only update 3.

Ah, I see... Wow... I haven't had a problem dealing with large web page, drawer or text file scrolling while playing music on my machine. A1XE-G4 with Radeon 9250 and a Soundblaster Live 5.1 and OS4.1 update 3. I do have some stuttering with heavy 3D stuff like Quake 3, but other than that nothing.

I apparently have an IRQ "conflict" where my NEC card shares an IRQ line with the SII0680, but I can't see how that could have anything to do with the sound. This conflict triggers some bug somewhere where the sii driver gets a timeout on a read request. It probably misinterprets a USB interrupt as its own and can't deal with it or whatever. Or the ehci driver steals the interrupt so it doesn't propagate to sii even when both the ehci and sii got an interrupt at the same time.

Maybe I have more "conflicts" where gfx and audio shares IRQ and are buggy.

Have you tried swapping around the IRQ assignments in UBoot? Sounds about right though, if the SII card takes control of the bus and times out because of some confusion over IRQs, it'll starve anything on the bus of data - including transfers to the sound card...

OK, I have a SATA card (3112) above the sound card which sits in the last PCI slot. No other physical PCI cards.

@gerograph Quote:
You should be able to fix this by using Mixer (configure it then add it to your WBStartup).

Run Sys:Utilities/Commodities/Mixer, and mute all "Monitor" (aka input) lines - except maybe "Monitor CD" (if you have analogue CD audio connected). Then click Save. BTW, muting means lowering the volume as far as it will go.

If that fixes your problem, then add Mixer to your WBStartup.

Note this probably only applies to the Sam440, where the on-board sounds circitry wasn't as well isolated as it should have been.

@Deniil
No problem here, but maybe my use of Mixer (above) stopped the problem being worse?

Quote:

WD40.

@Jack/gerograph

Could *not* reproduce it here, using TuneNet streaming and scrolling with Dopus text window or the shell with full screen dimensions (1280x1024). WB compositing is enabled on my SAM440ep (667 MHz). Scrolling is smooth and sound is clear without stutter. In Mixer all my "Monitor"s are muted (I did this since the beginning aka March 2009) - see ChrisH's post above...

@ChrisH

This is an IRQ/DMA problem, not electronic noise that can be muted in the Mixer. I do have everything muted though to minimize electronic noise, except PCM and Master of course.

When scrolling a large MUI list the music actually slows down a bit since each little DMA packed is delayed a bit. It doesn't appear as bad scratching as in DOpus, more like a bit of noise and music in slow motion (without pitch bend).

The audio transfers is getting seriously starved by the graphics DMA presumable. It doesn't have anything to do with the disk. The disk is affected by USB and audio is affected by graphics unrelated to each other.

And it all started with update 3. Never had any issues before that.

@mechanic

I typically prefer CRC 5-56 over WD40

Maybe the tooltypes of monitor can be tweaked, There's something related to interrupts afair, will try when I get to it (or someone else beats me...)

Quote:

And apply some sellotape where things became too loose

@Deniil Quote:
I wonder if this could have any relation to my (now worked-around) USB keyboard/mouse problems...

Can anyone reproduce this using only OS4 components, ie no DOpus or Tunenet?

For example, using multiview to play a sound sample?

[edi]
Never mind, I just did myself:
Load a CD, copy a track from the CD: into RAM:
Open Multiview, double-click the track and then press the Play button.
While that is playing, C:Type a large doc file to the Shell.

Sound goes mad (broken up).

I'll write a report about it.
[/edit]

[edit2]
FWIW, I get exactly the same effect with Update2, so it's nothing new.
[/edit2]

[edit3]
Correction, it's OK with aclean Update 2, I was checking a modified version with beta updates...
[/edit3]

@tonyw

Good to hear it has been acknowledged.