How to have Focusrite Saffire working on Ubuntu Gutsy

When upgraded Ubuntu from Feisty to Gusty, the newer freebob audio-firewire driver broke the support of Focusrite Saffire Pro. I have not tested the non-pro versions (Saffire and Saffire LE), but I guess it applies also to them.

Freebob/ffado main developer quickly identified the problem and proposed a provisional patch, which is what I’m gonna explain in this post. For a more definitive solution we’ll probably have to wait to the next ffado release. Hopefully soon.

First, the symtoms: This is how Gutsy freebob complains when starting jack with a Saffire Pro.

$ jackd -d freebob
jackd 0.103.0
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
jackd comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details
JACK compiled with System V SHM support.
loading driver ..
Freebob using Firewire port 0, node -1
unexpected response received (0x9)
Error (bebob_light/bebob_light_avdevice.cpp)[1679] setSamplingFrequencyPlug: setSampleRate: Could not set sample rate 48000 to IsoStreamInput plug 0
Error (bebob_light/bebob_light_avdevice.cpp)[1696] setSamplingFrequency: setSampleRate: Setting sample rate failed
FreeBoB ERR: FREEBOB: Error creating virtual device
cannot load driver module freebob

The problem is related to the sample rate interface. The quick solution is not using that interface. Just a matter of commenting out a piece of code.

Update 9th March:
Pieter Palmer makes me notice that from version 1.0.9 there is a ./configure switch that does what the below patch does. So you can safely skip the part of this blog about downloading 1.0.7 version and applying the patch.

Instead you should download the svn trunk

svn co https://freebob.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/freebob/trunk/libfreebob libfreebob

and then use –disable-samplerate at the ./configure step.

Begin deprecated:

Apply the following patch. If you don’t know how to do it, follow these steps: copy-paste the following patch into a file (i.e. /tmp/saffire.patch).

Index: src/libfreebobstreaming/freebob_streaming.c
===================================================================
--- src/libfreebobstreaming/freebob_streaming.c	(revision 449)
+++ src/libfreebobstreaming/freebob_streaming.c	(working copy)
@@ -154,7 +154,7 @@
 	 * This should be done after device discovery
	 * but before reading the bus description as the device capabilities can change
	 */
-
+#if 0 //disabled for Focusrite Saffire
    if(options.node_id > -1) {
        if (freebob_set_samplerate(dev->fb_handle, options.node_id, options.sample_rate) != 0) {
            freebob_destroy_handle(dev->fb_handle);
@@ -178,8 +178,8 @@
			return NULL;
		}
	    }
-
	}
+#endif

	/* Read the connection specification
 	 */


Then change dir to the checked out repository and apply the patch:

cd libfreebob-1.0.7
patch -p0 < /tmp/saffire.patch

End deprecated:

Now, the building phase. Get the build dependencies.

sudo apt-get build-dep libfreebob0


There is a problem here. For some reason libtool (or some package that includes it) is missing in the debian/control file. This seems to me a packaging bug that makes autoreconf give errors like this one:

possibly undefined macro: AC_ENABLE_STATIC


So, install libtool:

sudo apt-get install libtool


And build:

autoreconf -f -i -s 
./configure
make
sudo make install


To make sure that jack will take the new libfreebob (in /usr/local) we will hide the current freebob libs to jackd. I mean the ones installed by the debian package.

cd /usr/lib
sudo mkdir freebob_hidden
sudo mv libfreebob.* freebob_hidden/


That's all.

As always check that raw1394 module is ready. Else do this:

sudo modprobe raw1394
sudo chmod a+rw /dev/raw1394


Now jack should work without complaining:

 jackd -d freebob

How to compile freebob with optimizations
CFLAGS="-march=core2" ./configure --enable-optimize --enable-mmx --enable-sse


Or use this for 64bits enabled cpus:

CFLAGS="-march=nocona" ./configure --enable-optimize --enable-mmx --enable-sse

References:

 compiling freebob from svn


I'm very thankful to Pieter Palmer for the quick help at #ffado irc channel.


My next posts will talk about the reason I needed audio-firewire in linux. It was related to a real-time 3D audio exhibition developed with CLAM. It just happened yesterday and I'm very happy that it all worked really well.


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