M-Audio Delta 44 sound card problems

[Keith Shrimpton]

Hi,
This is a persistent and very discouraging problem for a lot of Ubuntu Studio users.
I am running a new installation of Ubuntu Studio 9.10 with an M-Audio Delta 44 sound card. Jack is running fine right out of the box.

System/Preference/Sound Hardware tab shows ICE1712{Envy24}PCI Multi-Channel I/O Controller. Input tab shows the same. Output tab shows Dummy Output Stereo.

My onboard sound card is disabled in the bios. And the alsaconf command is not found when I tried to configure alsa.

I have tried this solution, by adding the last 2 lines to /usr/share/alsa/cards/ICE1712.conf

**The reason pulseaudio right now doesn't work with this card is that it expects a front device that has
only 2 channels.
A possible fix for this is changing it's definition to:
ICE1712.pcm.front.0 {
********@args [ CARD ]
********@args.CARD {
****************type string
********}
********type route
********ttable.0.0 1
********ttable.1.1 1
********slave.pcm {
****************type hw
****************card $CARD
********}
********slave.format S32_LE
********slave.channels 10
}

Nothing seems to be working.

I also found the following potential solution, but unfortunately I am not very good with the programing side of Linux. If someone could clarify this for me, and point me in the right direction as far as commenting out module-hal-detect and module-detect, and even where to find the line, module detect, as I do not even see this when I open /etc/pulse/default.pa.
Or if there is perhaps another solution...
This is a HUGE problem for Ubuntu Studio users.

Thanks in advance, and heres what I found:

Automatic sound card detection isn't able to configure the
Delta card correctly, the card seems to be a bit too exotic
for that. So I'd say it's a HAL and/or PulseAudio problem.

Since the configuration process succesfully manages to open
the device - after much struggling - you probably can make
it work with static device configuration. The thing that the
configuration finally stumbles is that the channel map for
the sink and source aren't valid. That's because there isn't
a default channel map defined for 10 and 12 channels.

So, what you'll have to do is edit /etc/pulse/default.pa.
Comment out module-hal-detect and module-detect, and then
add these lines (if you don't need the sources, leave them
out):

# Load the on-board device:
load-module module-alsa-sink sink_name=intel-hda_out device=hw:0
load-module module-alsa-source source_name=intel-hda_in device=hw:0

# Load Delta 44:
load-module module-alsa-sink sink_name=delta_out device=hw:1 channels=10 channel_map=left,right,aux0,aux1,aux2,aux3,aux4,au x5,aux6,aux7
load-module module-alsa-source source_name=delta_in device=hw:1 channels=12 channel_map=left,right,aux0,aux1,aux2,aux3,aux4,au x5,aux6,aux7,aux8,aux9

# Set the default sink and source (not mandatory, intel-hda
# would probably be used without this):
set-default-sink
delta_out set-default-source delta_in


That configuration makes Delta a stereo device, in the sense
that if you play surround content, there will be sound only
in the first two channels. If you want a surround setup (or
want to have the stereo output on some other physical
connector(), edit the channel maps. Valid channel names are
listed in near the beginning of this page (under the "Device Drivers" heading):



If you wonder why I didn't set the 'channels' argument of
Delta to 2, that's because it seems that the device can't be
opened for just two channels. The auto-configurator managed
to open the device with 10 out and 12 in channels, that's
why I'm using those values.

This setup makes the assumption that the on-board device
will always be hw:0 and Delta will be hw:1. This isn't
necessary a valid assumption.
End of solution

So again, if someone could help me make sense out of this, or has a better idea, that would be terrific.

Thanks

[Keith Shrimpton]

My solution for this was to install Ubuntu Studio 9.04, and give up on 9.10

If anyone has a better handle on M-Audio Delta sound card detection issues, please post on this thread for others.

Maybe one day Linux will get it together and stop putting out dysfunctional releases. Ubuntu Studio is a specialty OS. Its for audio production, it even has a special kernel for that. And yet they release 8.04 with a useless and broken Jack server. Without Jack, the whole system is useless for audio production.

Most musicians who would want to use this system are end users of software. They are musicians, NOT computer programmers. The forums are loaded with complaints about Jack, at least the older releases. That kind of lack of attention to detail and quality control is just poor and discouraging.

Then again, I'm not really complaining, I am just getting this off my chest. Its FREE, what do you want?