HOWTO: USB Audio device

[satchnut]

It looks like you are using a USB hub plugged in to a USB port on your computer. Is that correct? If so, does the hub have a power supply or at least a jack for one? If it does, are you using the power supply? If not, try plugging in the power supply.

Although USB hubs can theoretically run without external power, a whole lot of USB devices fail through hubs unless the hub has external power.

Sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner...

The recorder is plugged directly into a USB 2.0 port in the motherboard. Could the fact that I'm running on a Dell desktop (Dimension 8300) be the culprit? Normally I would blame it on the crappy Dell OEM hardware, but the recorder does work in a Win environment... Mayby it's because Linux has little support for Dell hardware, or maybe it's because I didn't shower this morning...

[schdefan]

Hi satchnut!
Are you able to connect a digi cam or an USB stick to your USB input?
Maybe its not a problem with your soundcard but with your usb input.
schdefan

[SFN]

Sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner...

The recorder is plugged directly into a USB 2.0 port in the motherboard. Could the fact that I'm running on a Dell desktop (Dimension 8300) be the culprit?

I wouldn't think so. I could be wrong though.

Normally I would blame it on the crappy Dell OEM hardware, but the recorder does work in a Win environment...

If it's working under Windows, I would have to assume that the port is OK but try schdefan's suggestion of plugging some other USB device in. If that works then it's not the port.

Assuming that is the case, open up a terminal and type in lsmod. Paste the results here.

Again, I'm not Joe USB but I'll see what I can do.

[jshafer]

Hi, all --

I have been able to follow the instructions to set up my Tascam US-122 so that I am getting sound. Thanks for all the great tips. But there are still two minor problems that I am hoping to resolve:

(1) Occasional lack of sound - I am having an intermittent problem where about 25% of the time the sound doesn't work upon bootup. I can immediately tell there is a problem because there is no sound when arriving at the Ubuntu login screen. If I reboot the machine the problem usually clears up, though sometimes I need to reboot a second time before the sound returns.

Note: I added the command "sudo usx2yloader" as an entry in my Gnome startup programs to automatically reinitialize the card upon reboot. Not sure if this was the right way to do it...

(2) Gaming - I am getting no sound at all when starting the America's Army game; it appears that the application is not recognizing my USB audio device for some reason. When I exit the game the sound returns.

Any suggestions? Here is some information about my system:

OS: Ubuntu Linux 5.04 i686 kernel (dual-boot with Windows XP)
PC: Dell 4600, P4, 2.6GHz, 1GB RAM

Output from lsusb :
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 046d:0810 Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Pro
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 046d:c016 Logitech, Inc. Optical Mouse
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 1604:8007 Tascam US-122 Audio/Midi Interface
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Output from cat /proc/asound/cards :
0 [ICH5 ]: ICH4 - Intel ICH5
Intel ICH5 with AD1980 at 0xfebffa00, irq 17
1 [USX2Y ]: USB US-X2Y - TASCAM US-X2Y
TASCAM US-X2Y (1604:8007 if 0 at 001/005)

[SFN]

(1) Occasional lack of sound - I am having an intermittent problem where about 25% of the time the sound doesn't work upon bootup. I can immediately tell there is a problem because there is no sound when arriving at the Ubuntu login screen. If I reboot the machine the problem usually clears up, though sometimes I need to reboot a second time before the sound returns.

Note: I added the command "sudo usx2yloader" as an entry in my Gnome startup programs to automatically reinitialize the card upon reboot. Not sure if this was the right way to do it...

I'm assuming you did this by going to System, Preferences, Sessions, choosing the Startup Programs, then adding "sudo usx2yloader" there.

If that's the case, I have one idea. Edit that entry, changing the order to, say, 20. You might have to play with the order. (I should add that this is a guess as it seems to fix other things that I have added to the startup.)

(2) Gaming - I am getting no sound at all when starting the America's Army game; it appears that the application is not recognizing my USB audio device for some reason. When I exit the game the sound returns.

Any suggestions? Here is some information about my system:
<snip>
Output from cat /proc/asound/cards :
0 [ICH5 ]: ICH4 - Intel ICH5
Intel ICH5 with AD1980 at 0xfebffa00, irq 17
1 [USX2Y ]: USB US-X2Y - TASCAM US-X2Y
TASCAM US-X2Y (1604:8007 if 0 at 001/005)

I'm clueless on that one. I might try disabling the onboard sound card in the BIOS then starting up. If America's Army plays through the TASCAM that way, there's your answer although it's not a very good one.


As always, if anybody else has better answers (or even just different answers), feel free. I'm just feeling my way through all of this.

[schdefan]

Hi jshafer!

When I disabled the internal soundcard in BIOS my Tascam works fine.

Important is when you are adding "sudo usx2yloader" to the gnome autostarter that you are a superuser. You add yourself as superuser by editing the file /etc/sudoers with the command visudo (start as root)

# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
<you> ALL=(ALL) ALL

Or you can write a startup skript that contains the command usx2yloader and put that into your /etc/init.d directory. Build a symbolic link with update-rc.d.
The Skript should look like that

#!/bin/bash
# file: tascam_US-122
# load usx2yloader at boot time


# some outputs
BUS=`lsusb | grep Tascam | cut -d " " -f 2`
DEVICE=`lsusb | grep Tascam | cut -d " " -f 4 | cut -c 1-3`
US122_IHX=`locate us122fw.ihx`
EZUSB_HEX=` locate ld2-ezusb.hex`

echo "bus: " ${BUS}
echo "device: " ${DEVICE}
echo "us122_ihx: " ${US122_IHX}
echo "ezusb_hex: " ${EZUSB_HEX}

## i think you have to run this command only once not every time you boot 
#/sbin/fxload -s ${EZUSB_HEX} -I ${US122_IHX} -D /proc/bus/usb/${BUS}/${DEVICE}

/usr/bin/usx2yloader

echo "the control LEDs of the tascam US-122 should light up"
cat /proc/asound/cards

save this skript into /etc/init.d/tascam_US-122

build the startup link

#update-rc.d tascam_US-122 defaults

Hope this helps
schdefan

[jshafer]

schdefan,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you... I ended up reinstalling my entire Ubuntu system yesterday for some other reasons. I finally had the chance tonight to go through the US-122 install procedure again.

I thought that the script you suggested was a great idea, so I tried using it but it doesn't seem to be getting loaded at boot time. None of the "echo" lines print out during boot up, and I still need to manually run the "sudo usx2yloader" command after logging in. What is interesting, though, is that the "echo" lines for the tascam_US-122 bash script are in fact printing out when I shut down the system.

Do you know how I could move the tascam_US-122 bash script up earlier in the sequence so that it would be called during boot-up rather than at shut-down? (This is actually my first bash script, so I'm learning here...)

Also, some good news: the sound is working in America's Army and other multimedia apps now. The only thing I'm missing now is the collection of Gnome desktop sounds (i.e., startup, shutdown, browser links, panel buttons, etc.). I am hoping that once I get the bash script loaded prior to starting X/Gnome, then maybe those other sounds will start working too. We'll see.

BTW - I did go ahead and disable my other sound card in BIOS, and the Tascam US-122 still works fine in Windows XP so I think I'll leave it that way. Should have done that a long time ago, as I've never used that other sound card.

Thanks,
jshafer

[schdefan]

hi jshafer!

Good to hear that the sound is working.
Do a updatedb as root. That wil locate all files on your harddisc in a db. SO in the bash script from above the locate calls will work may they are empty.
have a look at the directory /etc/rc5.d/. There has to be a symbolic link

ls -lah /etc/rc5.d
S20bootUS_122-->/etc/init.d/boot_US122

That S means start it in Runlevel 5 at boot time. All links starting with K means execute them when you shutdown.


Are you sure that you are sudo?


Recently installed a new ubuntu version and the tascam install procedures after playing music files my system freezes completely! Still have to find out why this happens. On the same machine it was working fine on debian unstable.

schdefan

[jshafer]

schedfan,

I figured out that GDM was getting called at S13, earlier than the tascam_US-122 bash script at S20. So, obviously I wasn't seeing any screen output because Gnome was already loading prior to the bash script...

I used Boot-up Manager (BUM) to change the sequence of the tascam_US-122 bash script to S12, which was the same sequence # as ALSA. While experimenting with various combinations of things in the bash script (and rebooting lots of times) I noticed something interesting: the control LEDs on the Tascam US-122 were actually lighting up much earlier in the bootup process, prior to the tascam_US-122 bash script even getting called.

Apparently my Tascam US-122 is getting initialized during the "Starting hotplug subsystem..." step in the Ubuntu bootup process. However, even though the lights were coming on, they would then go out again as soon as GDM started loading.

To slow things down a bit and see what was going on, I added a "sleep 5" command at the end of my tascam _US-122 bash script. After I added this in, the lights were still staying on even after GDM started. Then I actually commented out the "usx2yloader" command in the bash script, and the lights are still staying on through the entire bootup process!

So, as of right now, my Tascam US-122 is effectively getting initialized automatically at bootup without even running "usx2yloader", just by adding a pause between starting ALSA and starting GDM. It's kind of bizarre, but my theory is that perhaps ALSA needed some time to get set up with the USB device and then starting GDM immediately afterward (not allowing ALSA to finish) was killing it.

Although the Tascam US-122 now seems to be consistently initializing at bootup, I am still having some sound problems with various applications. It seems that I have either a choice of running the system sounds (startup, shutdown, panel buttons, etc.) or multimedia apps, but not both at the same time. I have also seen XMMS and mozilla-mplayer lock-ups, etc.

At this point I think I need to keep experimenting with my ALSA vs. ESD vs. OSS configuration to get it all working nicely together. From other forum posts I've read, I guess that is kind of a "holy grail" that few people have been able to achieve in Linux.

- jshafer

[schdefan]

I think the first lights came up when hotplug is getting loaded.
From man hotplug

hotplug is a program which is used by the kernel to notify user mode software when some significant (usually hardware-related) events take
place. An example is when a USB or Cardbus device has just been plugged in. This is useful for automatically loading and setting up
drivers, packaged either as kernel modules or as user mode programs.

Later on alsa is running and maybe here the usx2yloader is already integrated?
And that is why the lights light up again?

Still good to hear that someone else is interested in having running a TASCAM US-122 on linux. I will have to fix my problem. After executing usx2yloader the system freezes.