Sound: VIA to what?

Red Alert

Ok, at the minute i've a RedHat 9 installation on one drive and a Mandrake 9 on the other.

I use the RedHat one for everything apart from gaming, as i've found that Mandrake's distribution is less tweaked than RedHat.

RH8 didn't recognise my onboard VIA8233 AC97 sound chip, RH9 did and it works ok most of the time.

Mandrake's using ALSA and the driver seems pretty broken as i'm getting a distorted buzzing sound whenever ordinary sound is played.

Having read too much about this particular VIA chip on the internet, i've decided that it has to go and be replaced with something better, especially as i'm going to connect the PC to my main sound system soon. (hopefully!)

I was thinking about a soundblaster Live! 5.1 card, anyone either got this installed on either RedHat (which doesn't use ALSA) or working using ALSA? Any other recommendations on fully compatible cards?

Thanks!
Peadar.

BTBB

Its entirely a matter of what kernel you have installed. I think I have the same VIA sound in my k7vza and it works no bother. And it did with SuSE 7.0 Just recompile your kernel. Forget what option it is of the top of my head though.

SB Live should work with the standard emu10k1 support in the kernel but you will need to download from the emu10k1 sourceforge project if you go for an Audigy.

BTBB

niallb

It's not entirely a matter of what kernel you have installed.
Mandrake shipped with a version of the alsa-driver in which the VIA support was broken.

Upgrading it from the default gets you to where I think you are, it works but it buzzes.

The reason it buzzes is that this chipset has two audio outs.
The first one is meant for four channel sound and clips if you feed it stereo.
You need to find the audio device your applications are using and make them use dsp1 instead of dsp0.
Making a symlink from /dev/dsp to /dev/dsp1 will help a lot.

I was going to change my audio card on the board that has this built in too, but I've been able to hold out for now.

I've had an sb-live for 2 years or so, and have mixed feelings.
It's a great card, but the driver support is a mess.

There are at least 3 drivers available, none of which is without problems.
Creative started to do a driver for it, and then just dropped it. Then there's alsa and the in-kernel driver.
I tried to use alsa with it for a long time to get to use jack and other really convenient sounding tools.
Loading alsa works to a degree, but you lose the ability to playback midi with wavetable synthesis
(argue me wrong on this one folks - please )
Also, under alsa, the mixer support becomes if not erratic, then unexpected.
(I think you need to set 4 faders to max to get it to record AT ALL).

The in-kernel driver (not as a module...) gives the most consistent audio support and
works flawlessly for record and playback. wavetable synthesis is supported, but it's harder to plug into all those new sound apps.

You could copy over your redhat kernel and use it with mandrake to get a better comparison. Just unfortunate that Mandrake packaged during a week where support for your sound device was broken.
Boot redhat and mount your mandrake root partition on e.g. /mnt/mandrake.

cp -av /lib/modules/`uname -r` /mnt/mandrake/lib/modules/ #(Those are backticks or primes)
Then you'll be able to boot mandrake with the redhat kernel and the option root=/dev/mandrakeroot

NiallB

electrofelix

Originally posted by BTBB

SB Live should work with the standard emu10k1 support in the kernel but you will need to download from the emu10k1 sourceforge project if you go for an Audigy.

RH9 comes with the emu10k1 driver which works for the Audigy, possibly a few bug fixes are in the latest version but I haven't noticed any problems since using RH9. That said with 8 I did have to go download the driver to get the sound card functioning correctly. Also note that I don't do recording with the card either so I'm not sure how good that is.

Red Alert

Thanks for all the help so far....

Trouble is the particular mobo i have has stereo as opposed to surround outputs and there's no way of changing into 6-channel mode. I went looking for dsp1 but it isn't there at all.

Is there some way to make dsp1 and then remove dsp0 in the /dev listings before making a symlink to dsp1?

niallb

All the mobos have stereo out.
You probably don't have /dev/dsp1 ,
but you might have either /dev/sound/dsp1 or /dev/snd/dsp1.
The /dev/dsp1 symlink probably isn't being created because it's normally not needed.

If you use devfs, don't go near making or deleting special files.
/dev/dsp1 is just a different thing to /dev/dsp0.
It's not a case of one or the other.

Take a look at your /dev/sound directory.
It may not actually be dsp1 if you use alsa.
I think it would be /dev/sound/adsp

Run ls -l /dev/dsp to see where it's going,
and see if /dev/adsp is an option.
You could also run cat /proc/asound/oss/sndstat

I've had weird results with this chip,
but good sound is possible.

I've also had this for a while as /etc/asoundrc,
it helped.

pcm.via82xx {
type hw
card 0
}

ctl.via82xx {
type hw
card 0
}

NiallB

Red Alert

Must try that when i reboot into mandrake. GAME yesterday were selling the SB live for 30 euro so i picked it up. Sounds excellent altho' i haven't got a surround system to try the 5.1 sound on. Does the surround output work under Linux? And if so which are the correct ALSA mixer channels to turn up?

I'd love to be able to have the SB connected to the stereo and the VIA chip connected to the monitor's inbuilt speakers - i know ALSA offers this but is it worth the hassle? And how does one send the sound from each app to the correct card - does it use the OSS device names as normal?