Model 12 on Manjaro RT Linux: which sample format in PulseAudio?

[rdtsc]

Hi, tried using Jack2 (over several years) but that was more trouble than it was worth. So removed all traces of pipewire (and when that had no affect) decided to go straight-pulseaudio, which for the most part now works fine. Rarely, get some clicks/pops/audio completely dies, and am looking for ways to tighten up real-time parameters and whatnot.

Discovered that ~/.pulse/daemon.conf has lots of settings, including default sample rate and format. Have set the PC and Model 12 both to 48kHz and that seems to be solid. daemon.conf can also specify the sample format, which defaults to float32le. There are 13 possible settings for pulseaudio sample format but a lot of them are going to be invalid. Is float32le the best format? Sorry for such an obscure question, but nothing is mentioned in the Model 12 user manual. Is it the case where if the sample format is incorrect, it just means extra CPU overhead in conversion? Would love to reduce such if possible. Thanks.

 

[rdtsc]

Well I tried `s24le` since that more closely matched the 24-bit audio being attempted - worked fine, no noticeable performance increase, but made zero difference in my "random USB-audio-stops-playing after 2-60 minutes" issue.

Should mention that I had my PC internal soundcard disabled, and was attempting to use the Model 12 as the sole audio device. Have been all through the weeds on my issue; as far as using the `rtirq` package to raise the priority of `xhci` to 99, of course with zero affect. Pretty sure this has to be an ALSA hardware/driver bug at this point. The Model 12 is USB class-compliant, so should just work, however it is currently not listed as tested with ALSA.

I finally got sick enough of all this (been battling it for years) so did the unthinkable - re-enabled on-board sound, and physically patched that output into the Model 12. That works great - no more sudden audio loss... but this consumes two inputs and that (stereo) channel now has to be switched from Direct (to hear PC Audio) to PC-USB (to do any kind of DAW work.) Guess I'll have to live with that. Thanks for looking, have a great day.