Re: [alsa-devel] Question on Compressed offload session

From: Pierre-Louis Bossart
Date: Fri Nov 14 2014 - 11:29:46 EST


On 11/13/14, 10:08 PM, gsantosh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 11/12/14, 9:02 PM, gsantosh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Hi All,

The Question is for the compressed offload session.

For a generic codec driver during the startup function it will set some
of
the hw_constraints rule similarly like this.

snd_pcm_hw_constraint_list(substream->runtime, 0,
SNDRV_PCM_HW_PARAM_RATE,
&constraints_12_24);

pcm_lib.c will try to add the rule to the runtime structure by accessing
the pointers which will be initialized during opening of the session,
as The Constraints added by the codec driver will be updated in the

struct snd_pcm_hw_constraints of runtime structure which will be part of
substream handle.

But for the compressed offload I do not see the initialization done for
HW
constraints, as done in pcm session

2092int snd_pcm_open_substream(struct snd_pcm *pcm, int stream,
2093 struct file *file,
2094 struct snd_pcm_substream **rsubstream)

most of the existing drivers which has the hw_constraint_list code will
not be applicable for compress offload session, how to solve this?

You can't directly link physical output/input with the decoder/encoder
in general.
For decoders, the sample-rate may not always be known ahead of time,
e.g. with AAC-SBR implicit signaling. There is no way to add constraints
on open, there is an assumption that a sample-rate converter is part of
the chain to take care of the difference between the output of the
offloaded decoder and the back-end actual sampling frequency (same with
number of channels and bit-width btw).
Likewise if you encode the frequency may not be the same as what the
backend provides and some SRC might be needed.
-Pierre


I Agree we cannot have a direct link between physical output / input with
decoder / encoder, during compressed playback.
My concern here is, if we have a legacy codec driver which is used for the
PCM out, and in the start up of this codec driver it is adding
hw_constraints list, now the same codec driver is used for the compressed
session FE or PCM session FE,
If the routing is such that compressed FE -> codec the hw_constraints
added by this driver is not valid here,
and legacy drivers needs to be changed,
Now the question comes how to change this drivers?
I can think of following things
if the routing is done for Compressed FE -> codec

1) in Codec driver avoid adding hw_constraint during startup if compressed
session is routed, this recommend for codec driver to know that compress
session is routed to codec which I feel not the correct way to handle this

I was checking how to handle this situation in much better way.

What exactly do you call a 'legacy codec'? If there is a DAI i am not sure I understand the problem.

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