JJC,

Thank you for the confirmation.  I'm certainly at a loss for an explanation.  We do know that some radio adapters that were made with/from non-genuine C-Media CM1XX chipsets have issues, but that's likely the minority.  Certainly all of the commercially available USB radio adapters available today will have genuine components in them, but who knows what comes in those $3.00 fobs from China?

Thanks again,
Kevin W3KKC


On 2/8/2018 8:48 AM, JJC wrote:
Kevin, 

I am using full DSP (USBRadio) as I had noted before along with lsusb output.  Happy to provide more details.

Sent from the iRoad

On Feb 7, 2018, at 16:38, Kevin Custer <kuggie@kuggie.com> wrote:

JJC,

Are you using the simpleusb channel driver?  It's unclear, but you do mention something about COS in one of your replies below.  Using the simpleusb channel driver drastically cuts down on the number of processes necessary, where usbradio uses much more CPU.  HOWEVER, if you are using usbradio (what we call full DSP) then I'd like to know more about your set-up.  If you are using simpleusb, there's no argument, and that explains it.

Please let us know.

Thanks,
Kevin


On 2/7/2018 5:16 PM, JJC wrote:
I took a while to think about how I wanted to respond to the "I am being fairly picky" statement, seemingly indicating that some of us are not.  In any event I am also (as are all of the site owners on our system) very picky about our audio.  I stand by my statement that we have zero issues with the audio on any of our Pi based systems.  I have never generated a tone using the Pi, always rather a high grade tone generator to set audio levels etc...  Again, wish that I had a silver bullet for you guys, maybe it's just the luck of the draw?

JJC
N0PKT

On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 8:59 PM, Tim Sawyer <tisawyer@gmail.com> wrote:
My experience with the 1khz tone test Skyler mentions is that it sounds crappy on all flavors of hardware running DIAL/ACID/Limey. Only Hamvoip makes a clean 1khz tone. But, has been said on here many times, it's not open source.

On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 7:20 PM, Skyler F <electricity440@gmail.com> wrote:
Please realize, I am being fairly picky! Also, please don't mention the HamVoip image, I know they have a precision timer, but it is not open source!

Here is a way to tell for all you out there on a pi,

Hit DTMF *904, and listen to the 1kHz tone. Count how many times it "POPS" or does something other than a pure 1kHz tone over a 30 second period. Report the channel driver you are using. 

Skyler

On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 8:12 PM, JJC <cummingsj@gmail.com> wrote:
And uptime/load info during an active net tonight on the same system:

$ uptime
 20:10:43 up 64 days,  5:18,  1 user,  load average: 0.18, 0.18, 0.21

On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 4:54 PM, JJC <cummingsj@gmail.com> wrote:
I am using USBRadio on one of the nodes (the first that I checked)and here is my usb info:
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0d8c:013a C-Media Electronics, Inc.

JJC
N0PKT

On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 3:35 PM, Andrew Sylthe <asylthe@kc9ona.com> wrote:
I've only ever experienced strange audio issues with usbradio, and have never had an issue running simpleusb on the Pi 3.

On Feb 4, 2018 3:51 PM, "Tim Sawyer" <tisawyer@gmail.com> wrote:
I believe stuttering audio only happens on Pi nodes running USBradio. My understanding is the Rasperry Pi does not have enough horsepower for USBradio.      SimpleUSB should not a problem but if anyone knows different please speak up.

On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 11:53 AM, Dave Maciorowski <wa1jhk@macski.us> wrote:

Hi All,

I'd like to know more about your setups, Jay's that are working and Jon and Skyler's that have issues.  Do you use simpleusb or usbradio?  What USB-to-audio interface are you using including the line returned by the lsusb command.  Here's mine:

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0d8c:000e C-Media Electronics, Inc. Audio Adapter (Planet UP-100, Genius G-Talk)

I ask because I'm chasing an interface issue that might be related.

Thanks.

  Dave
  WA1JHK


On 2/4/2018 9:47 AM, JJC wrote:
I wish that I had a magic formula for you.  All that I can say is that we run minimal setups (least possible number of running processes and installed packages) on the Pis and we are sure to use the correct audio COR interfaces etc... We also are meticulous in setting up levels using service monitors of all of the radios themselves.  I help to maintain a large system (That Skyler has used frequently in the past) which is primarily run on PIs and we have not had any of the issues that you guys are experiencing.  Wish I could be of more help, but I truly do not believe that it's an issue caused by the Pi.

JJC
N0PKT

On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 8:57 AM, REDBUTTON_CTRL <jrorke@cogeco.ca> wrote:
I too have had the sputtering audio issues. Mostly it starts to degrade over a few days. I have run dial on Pi2 s and HP thin clients. and so far all of them need periodic reboots or asterisk restarts to clean up the audio.

I am using DIAL Full DSP with tone encode and decode. Some units have 2 or 3 or nodes. Even a single node pi does it.
So if you have a magic set up that fixes this I would like to hear about it.

In one case I had to put back a full desk top pc to keep from having to re set on a daily basis.
Pcs dont seem to suffer from the motor boating issue.

Jon VA3RQ


On 2/3/2018 9:26 PM, JJC wrote:
Skyler,

I’ll have to disagree with your statements completely.  I have not only personally load-tested but I have and know of many high traffic systems that are running with zero “sputter” or issue.l on a Pi.  Several have been on the air and running for well over a year.

I am also running one system in conjunction with DMRLink and transcoding audio (read a much heavier demand on System resources) from DMR<->  Analog with no “sputter”.  Granted the transcoding is offloaded to a separate chip but nonetheless.  On all of these systems running on a Pi 2 or 3 the system load from asterisk, DMRLink etc all combined never exceeds 15% and the audio is always clean ( not withstanding network craziness ).

So having said all of this I would look elsewhere for what may be causing your audio ailments.  I can’t really point you in a specific direction other than to review overall system load and performance inline with general system administration best practices.  And of course standard troubleshooting methods of hardware swapping/testing and validation.

JJC
N0PKT

Sent from the iRoad, so please ignore any typos or awesome autocorrects

On Feb 3, 2018, at 18:19, Skyler F<electricity440@gmail.com>  wrote:

At this point, I don't think the raspberry pi audio is as good as it could be on the raspberry pi. Even with a pi 3 on the best settings in usbradio, it will sputter every once and a while I realize Doug has implemented a precision timer, however, his image is not open source, and I cannot modify, therefore not an option for me.

What is the best mini computer hardware available for reasonable prices nowadays that I could use in place of the pi? The raspberry pi arm architecture just does not seem to cut the current versions of AllStar and DAHDI. I realize how picky I am being, but I am sort of going crazy by some raspberry pi nodes i've put together with crazy sputtering issues. And the telemetry sometimes sounds like it is played at 1/2 speed. U

Usbradio and simpleusb have their different problems, but neither seem to work ok. I would actually argue usbradio works better on the pi because it does not have an unreliable duplex audio delay.

Do ATOM processers work well? Best suggestions here for something lightweight and non power-hungry?

Thank You!
Skyler KDØWHB