[Speex-dev] Speex/Linux/ALSA

[Steve Kann]

If you're an audio rookie, might I suggest using portaudio instead of
trying to program to ALSA (or OSS) directly.  Even if portability
doesn't interest you, it's also a much more straightforward API.

*PortAudio* - an Open-Source Cross-Platform Audio API
<http://www.portaudio.com/>


Craft, Jerry wrote:

>First let me introduce myself:
>Sr Computer Scientist
>20+ yrs SW/HW development
>Audio Rookie < 60 days
>
>Intel based computer
>Soundblaster 128 PCI
>Linux Fedora Core 2
>ALSA - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
>
>ALSA provides the audio and MIDI functionality to the Linux operating system
>as of Fedora Core 2 and is the future of Linux (so I have been told)
>http://www.alsa-project.org/
>
>I have read the documentation for Speex and installed speex on my platform.
>Prior to attempting compression, my software captured audio, stored it,
>retrieved it and could play it back.  The ALSA aplay utility could also
>replay the files that were stored.  The next obvious step is compression.
>
>I have yet to correlate the ASLA terminology with the terminology used
>in the speex documentation, and this is probably my biggest problem.
>
>With the speex API, I can create an executable, but when I run it,
>speex_bits_write always returns 38 bytes no matter what I send it.
>Here are some details of what I am doing, some questions I have,
>and hopefully someone can point out what I am doing wrong.
>
>The ALSA call to snd_pcm_hw_params_set_format is setting the sound
>format to unsigned 8 bit SND_PCM_FORMAT_U8
>
>Q - Do I have to use 16 bit for speex?
>
>The ALSA call to snd_pcm_hw_params_set_rate_near is setting the
>rate to 11025 hz, the lowest I have been successful with.
>
>Q - how does this correlate to speex narrow and wide modes?
>
>The ALSA call to snd_pcm_hw_params_set_channels is setting it to
>a single channel (MONO)
>
>The ALSA call to snd_pcm_hw_params_set_periods is setting this
>to 2. Periods used to be called fragments.
>
>The ALSA call to snd_pcm_hw_params_set_buffer_size is setting this
>to the period size (8192) times the number of periods (2)
>
>The ALSA call to snd_pcm_readi has been tried with the number of frames
>set to 100, 160, 200, 2000.  It puts the data read into an unsigned char
>array.
>
>After capturing the data, I copy the unsigned char array into a float array
>and follow the example code in sampleenc.c
>
>speex_bits_reset(&bits);
>speex_encode(state, floatbuf, &bits);
>cbytes = speex_bits_write(&bits, comprbuf, BUFSIZE);
>
>cbytes always returns 38 no matter what the frames are set to in the
>ALSA snd_pcm_readi call.
>
>I do know that valid sound in the unsigned char array returned from the
>ALSA snd_pcm_readi call is less than 0x7A, and anything above 0x7A is
>background noise or silence.
>
>Q - is this inverted for speex?
>
>_______________________________________________
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>Speex-dev at xiph.org
>http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/speex-dev
>
>
>

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