[Voyage-linux] More on the Ayre QB-9

[jegunn]

This seems to be the tally now:

USB1 mode does not work with any recent Linux kernel or any distro I have 
tried; the dmesg error is the one I sent last time, and the one others 
have gotten, about inability of Alsa to read the frequency at ep 01x. The 
display reads 96 (kHz) and the device is dead. With pre-2.6.32 kernels the 
situation is even worse, but the device does not work.

USB2.0 mode appears to work perfectly with a recent snapshot of Voyage,
kernel (2.6.38, Alsa 1.0.24, compiled for 2.6.38) no matter what order one 
plugs or powers the devices. This is only for two machines, but quite
different architectures: an old VIA C7 mini-itx and a brand-new
Zotac AMD Turion Neo M880G. Some of my inconsistent results in my
last post were due to my being stupid.

(To warn others, be SURE your motherboard audio is disabled or, if
you cannot in the BIOS, that their drivers are removed; otherwise
you cannot be sure, depending on how you power/plug things, that the
USB DAC will be Card 0. I am sure there is some way to tell udev what
you want, but I haven't a clue)

Voyage-MPD 0.7.0 works most of the time with the DAC in USB2.0 mode,
but not always. Again, if the DAC is plugged in to the running computer
and itself is powered, or if the computer is booted while the DAC
is powered and connected, it is OK, but powering up the computer first
and then the DAC does NOT work; it does with the new snapshot.

Anyway, it would appear that the newest version works perfectly in USB2
but nothing works in USB1 mode. However, all USB ports these days
are USB2 (or 3--haven't tried those yet, but I have 2 on the AMD
box) and the DAC plays redbook CD files as well as high-res files
perfectly in USB2 mode, so for me, at least, the case is closed.

(and all my previous problems EXCEPT the difficulty with mpd building
the database, which I still do not understand but may well stem
from the same thing as the others, were due to my own carelessness/
stupidity.)

Thanks, Punky, for a real jewel of a product.

--jim gunn