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Ecasound documentation - Frequently-asked-questions (FAQ)


Table of Contents

1: Compiling

1.1: Errors when compiling audioio-af.cpp

1.2: If ecasound crashes - how to compile for debugging?

1.3: How to rebuild the source-RPMs with ALSA support?

2: Using

2.1: Can't open shared shared libraries

2.2: How do I use the parameter xxx?

2.3: Ecasound isn't doing anything but it still seems to hog all CPU-time

2.4: What file format should I use for mixing and recording?



1: Compiling

1.1: Errors when compiling audioio-af.cpp

Upgrade your audiofile headers. At least 0.1.6 version of the library has duplicate extern "C" -wrappers in the file aupvlist.h. The result looks like this:
--cut--
In file included from audioio-af.cpp:28:
/usr/local/include/audiofile.h:603: parse error before `}'
make[3]: *** [audioio-af.o] Error 1 
--cut--

1.2: If ecasound crashes - how to compile for debugging?

The easiest way is to increase debug level (-d:level option). This gives you a lot of info. Sometimes however, this is not enough. For debugging purposes, you should compile a separate debug version of ecasound. You can do this with "make distclean ; ./configure --enable-debug ; make install". This produces a new set of executables and libraries (libecasound_debug.so, ecasound_debug, etc). Notice that these are considerably slower than normal optimized versions. To summarize, if ecasound acts weirdly, try to reproduce the behaviour with _debug versions. This way all assertions are checked and extra debugging information helps to trace problems with gdb.

1.3: How to rebuild the source-RPMs with ALSA support?

If you have ALSA installed properly, normal rebuild is enough: "rpm --rebuild ecasound-x.y.zrt.src.rpm" (replace x, y, z and t with proper version numbers).

2: Using

2.1: Can't open shared shared libraries

If you get the following error message...

--cut--
error in loading shared libraries: libecasound.so.x: cannot open shared object file: No such
file or directory
--cut--

Add /usr/local/lib to your /etc/ld.so.conf and run "/sbin/ldconfig". If you haven't installed ecasound to the default location, replace /usr/local/lib with the correct library path. If the it still doesn't work, use "ldd /usr/local/bin/ecasound/" to see what library ecasound tries to use.

Same applies to other libraries used by ecasound (libkvutils, libaudiofile, etc).

2.2: How do I use the parameter xxx?

The best place to start is the file examples.html. It can be found from www.wakkanet.fi/ecasound (ecasound home page). Next you should check the ecasound(1) manual page. Finally, help given by the -h command line option is always up-to-date. If you still don't know what to do, mail me at kaiv@wakkanet.fi.

2.3: Ecasound isn't doing anything but it still seems to hog all CPU-time

You're probably running ecasound in raised-priority mode. It is turned on with the -r command line option or by specifying "default-to-raisepriority true" in your ~/.ecasoundrc.

2.4: What file format should I use for mixing and recording?

You should always use .raw or .wav. By doing this, you will probably get better performance as these formats are internally supported by ecasound.