What's With The Sound Quality?

[Dromede]

in the beginning, there was the Sharprom...it's music player was quite good, the sound was crisp and loud...but there was little bass response. and since it doesn't have an equalizer the problem could not be fixed. Then there was the PdaXrom which gave us Xmms... well, im here to discuss about the crappy sounds emanating from my (quality)headphones driven by Xmms. as i said the sound is crappy, apparently unbalanced and there is no way of fixing that since xmms equalizer doesnt work on our Z's. fine, i said to myself...just install some other player that has a working equalizer. So i hit the forums...And end up being seriously dissapointed....

apparently there is no music player with an acceptable working equ AFAIK.
Which is kind of strange 'cos it seems that our Z's sound chips(wolfson WM8750) have basic equ capabilities which can be seen on this link:

http://staging.wolfsonmicro.com/products/WM8750/

I also remember reading somewhere that our Z's have the same DAC as ipod's do, can anyone confirm/negate that?

So what's the problem? is it so hard to make a software interface to existing hardware dsp capabilities? And why doesn't xmms equ work?

[Dromede]

anyone?
anything?

[arniel]

anyone?
anything?
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Sadly, I thinnk anyone who gives a toss has already dumped their Zs for something a bit more appropriate.  I had a vision, once, that I could use my Z for all manner of tasks from being an MP3 player to reading pdf files to composing emails.  Fairly simple stuff, no?  Well, ever since upgrading from OZ 3.2 (I have a collie), the Z has been nothing but trouble with stupid problems like not being able to suspend properly, through extremely rough sound quality with mp2 files to general instability.  For sure, the hardware is capable of useful things but the software sucks badly - nothing is ever stable.  Even playing with the Qtopia ROM I now find that it ignores the SD card I have.  So now it sits in my rucksack waiting for the day when a useable OS is available.  Until that time, a real MP3 player and outboard Creative Dolby encoder takes care of my musical needs and good old fashioned paper books do the rest...

[eviLjazz]

Actually, I'm currently hacking the 2.4 driver for the WM8750 audio chip.
The headphone jack on my Zaurus is broken. It won't recognize when I'm pulling out the headphone plug and thus won't switch back to the internal speaker. I've already added functionality for manually overriding that.
Anyway, while I was at it I also extended the driver to support bass and treble regulation. This is currently only working in my userspace testcode, however it will make it into the driver ASAP.
I think I have the patches ready by the weekend.

[Dromede]

you just made me really happy... :-D

[danboid]

Actually, I'm currently hacking the 2.4 driver for the WM8750 audio chip.
The headphone jack on my Zaurus is broken. It won't recognize when I'm pulling out the headphone plug and thus won't switch back to the internal speaker. I've already added functionality for manually overriding that.
Anyway, while I was at it I also extended the driver to support bass and treble regulation. This is currently only working in my userspace testcode, however it will make it into the driver ASAP.
I think I have the patches ready by the weekend.
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Wow! Thats great news!

I hope to see this code integrated into the kernel of the next pdaXii13 release

Thanks for improving the Z experience eviLjazz!

[adf]

Actually, I'm currently hacking the 2.4 driver for the WM8750 audio chip.
The headphone jack on my Zaurus is broken. It won't recognize when I'm pulling out the headphone plug and thus won't switch back to the internal speaker. I've already added functionality for manually overriding that.
Anyway, while I was at it I also extended the driver to support bass and treble regulation. This is currently only working in my userspace testcode, however it will make it into the driver ASAP.
I think I have the patches ready by the weekend.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=164234\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Wow! Thats great news!

I hope to see this code integrated into the kernel of the next pdaXii13 release

Thanks for improving the Z experience eviLjazz!
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I agree. That will be a really nice addition to my Z. Looking forward to it, thanks

[eviLjazz]

It's almost finished. I just need to debug a problem with enabling the 3D mode. For some reason the register is switching back right after the mode was enabled for the first time and the audio device is closed.
Also the OSS /dev/mixer stuff needs to be implemented. The options look pretty slim for treble, bass and 3D sound adjustments. AFAIK, OSS does only allow values in range of 0 to 100 for these three settings and the WM8750 offers way more options here.
Attached is a preliminary screenshot of the control app. This application will control all advanced parameters in /proc/driver/wm8750/.

[zedkatuf2]

It's almost finished. I just need to debug a problem with enabling the 3D mode. For some reason the register is switching back right after the mode was enabled for the first time and the audio device is closed.
Also the OSS /dev/mixer stuff needs to be implemented. The options look pretty slim for treble, bass and 3D sound adjustments. AFAIK, OSS does only allow values in range of 0 to 100 for these three settings and the WM8750 offers way more options here.
Attached is a preliminary screenshot of the control app. This application will control all advanced parameters in /proc/driver/wm8750/.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=164501\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Wow - nice work.  Will this end up running OK on pdaxrom, or is it dependent on running opie (probably yes, by the looks of the screenshot)

[daniel3000]

If a basic commandline-based solution for pdaXrom would be available, that would already be great!
This could be used in conjunction with Xdialog as a GUI.
Please keep us informed!

daniel

[eviLjazz]

I'm now getting the necessary kernel patches and packages ready. It should be available pretty soon.
The mixer application should be compilable with Qt 2 or 3 since it's pretty simple.
I need to check out pdaXii13. Are there any dual-boot options available?

[eviLjazz]

Alright, here is the first test release:
http://www.katastrophos.net/zaurus/sources/wm8750mixer/

The control app is also available via my feed:
http://www.katastrophos.net/zaurus/packages/

I can provide compiled kernel images if required. Let me know. I can only test on my C3200 though...

[daniel3000]

hmm - kernel image? Isn't this simply a driver module which has to be replaced? Otherwise it might get quite complicated to add this to an existing setup.

Would such a Sharp ROM module work as well under pdaXrom? I hope so.
Please explain a bit how to set it up.

I am able to compile applications, but not modules or even an entire kernel currently.

Thanks a lot
daniel

[eviLjazz]

The audio driver for the WM8750 is linked into the kernel. It's not a module. That's the case in almost all 2.4.20 kernels I know of. If it was a module, things would be a lot easier...
My patch extends the existing driver with the new features. I was contemplating to move my code into a separate module. However, some of the features require a register setup quite early in the initialization process of the chip (e.g. for 3D sound). I can't do that in a separate module - at least not with conventional methods...
I can provide compiled kernels for Cacko and Sharp ROM only.
I think pdaXrom beta 3 has special kernel patches applied for the X11 gfx acceleration et al. Where can I find the kernel sources?

Meanie mentions on http://www.users.on.net/~hluc/myZaurus/pdaxii13.html:

zImage.bin

This is a kernel image. I just renamed the kernel from the C3000 beta2 to zImage-2.4.20.bin. This way, I can use almost any 2.4.20 kernel image for the C3000, by simply renaming the kernel image to zImage-2.4.20.bin and flashing it. I have found that the C3000 beta2 kernel works best and is most stable. I have tried using the Tetsu special kernel image as well and it mostly works, but since the C3000 beta2 kernel works great, there is no point in using the Tetsu kernel.

I still haven't tested pdaXrom beta 3/pdaXii13, so I can't comment here. I don't want to endanger my currently working productive setup.
But it seems pdaXrom beta 3 might as well work with any 2.4.20 kernel. Tetsu's kernel isn't very different from the original Sharp kernel except for several performance optimizations. The kernel that comes with Cacko 1.23 includes most of the Tetsu patches except for the new reliable FastFPE code.
I'm currently in the process of setting up a SVN repository for the 2.4.20 kernel on my site. My current kernel merges the latest Tetsu with the latest Cacko patches and adds some additional features. So perhaps this would be useable with pdaXii13 too? I'll let you know once I have it set up.

[T3_slider]

I think the best idea for getting it to work with pdaXrom would be to submit your work to a pdaXrom dev -- if users have to flash their own unofficial pdaXrom kernel and then try to get pdaXrom to work with it, it might get a little difficult. That's just my idea though -- if you can come up with something different/better go for it.