[MPlayer-users] alsa output strangeness with latest CVS

[ephemeron at softhome.net]

On 30. May 2004 at 10:18AM +0200,
alpha0x89 at yahoo.de wrote:

> On Thursday 20 May 2004 05:15, ephemeron at softhome.net wrote:
> > I noticed that with today's CVS I get stuttering alsa sound (in
> > native mode) and lots of:
> >
> > alsa-space: xrun of at least 24.698 msecs. resetting stream 1.3% 0 0 98%
> >
> > I also noticed that -ao alsa1x has disappeared in favor of a
> > generic -ao alsa. Surprisingly in OSS emulation (-ao oss without
> > any real OSS modules getting loaded) the sound is OK.  Is anyone
> > else experiencing this problem?
> 
> I have the same problem with MPlayer dev-CVS-040527-18:58. It
> depends on the quality of the the audio stream, for instance
> 
> AO: [alsa] 44100Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian) (2 bps)
> 
> causes a stuttering sound with a lot of "alsa-space: xrun"
> messages. The msec values are different when I zoom the video
> (-vo x11 -zoom -xy 640 -fs).
> 
> Lower quality audio like
> 
> AO: [alsa] 11025Hz 2ch Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian) (2 bps)
> 
> causes no messages as long I do not minimize or maximize any
> window under KDE, everytime I do so I get one "alsa-space:
> xrun" message.

Check for lines like the following in mplayer's console
messages.  In the latest CVS I get with -ao alsa:

alsa: 48000 Hz/2 channels/4 bpf/4064 bytes buffer/Signed 16 bit Little Endian

In "older" CVS (dev-CVS-040510-08) I get with -ao alsa1x:

alsa: 48000 Hz/2 channels/4 bpf/65536 bytes buffer/Signed 16 bit Little Endian

Note the difference in the "buffer" size ("4064 bytes" vs "65536
bytes").  You're right: it depends on the audio quality.  By the
way, are you using onboard sound?