Re: [opensuse] arts, alsa and oss

On Saturday 06 January 2007 23:30, Clayton wrote:
Ok, so what sound card are you using? Also explain a little about you
speaker setup - such as you have external speakers and headphones at the
same time? Or, is it that you're switching between the two (also a bit of
a mystery why you have 3 dsp devices with skype)? Could be something to
do with the sound cards output ports on the device or the software config
that is routing the signals.

I mentioned the setup in my previous email.. but probably not clearly....
:-)

The main sound card is a Sound Blaster Live! 24 connected to external
speakers (uses ca0106 driver). The only other sound device I have is
my Logitech USB headset. Both devices are connected at the same time
(I am not switching between the two - both remain connected at all
times). The sound card is on /dev/dsp, and the headset on /dev/dsp2.

There is no device on /dev/dsp1 - it's not even there in the /dev
directory. The "third" device is the MIDI part of the SoundBlaster,
and shows up as MPU-401... the same as it's always done in Linux.

As a comparison, if I boot to Kubuntu (6.10), and check the same
hardware, the /dev devices are exactly the same (ie the SB is on
/dev/dsp, the headset on /dev/dsp2, and no /dev/dsp1 device). OSS
works fine through the SoundBlaster in all applications I set to use
it.... meaning that Cedega works with sound, as well as something like
Skype (if I set it to use OSS). Permissions on the /dev devices are
the same... except in SUSE /dev/dsp2 has a + at the end of the
permissions.

On SUSE, I am using the same hardware, drivers, and software (other
than that one is installed from RPM and the other from DEB). I am
using the exact same software/application specific configuration as
well.

Also, on SUSE, if I play a movie with MPlayer, I have to use ALSA as
my sound (the only output that currently produces any sound at all via
the SB). The whole time there is an error flashing (too fast to read)
on the desktop that says (when you stop/pause the movie) "Unable to
find simple control 'PCM' 0". I cannot play the movie with this error
strobing (this also happens on Kubuntu). My solution in the past was
to simply switch over to OSS (in MPlayer options). If I do that now,
the OSS sound starts playing on /dev/dsp2 (my headset). There is no
sound at all if I direct the output to the SoundBlaster (on /dev/dsp).
In Kubuntu it works fine via the SoundBlaster if I set MPlayer to use
OSS and direct the sound to /dev/dsp.

It's got to be something in SUSE (configuration? kernel compilation?)
that's the problem. But what it is, is a mystery. It's keeping me
from using 10.2 as my main desktop though :-(

Could this be linked to the problem I have with SUSE 10.2 where all

users have no sound at all until I manually add them to the Audio
group?
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=227420

C.

Why aren't you using the snd-emu10k1 driver? The ALSA wki page has the
following;

This is the wiki page about Creative Labs Audigy LS alsa driver. It's called
snd-ca0106 - formerly known as snd-audigyls... SB Live 24bit - capture from
analog inputs does't work and the 1st entry for supported cards is SB Audigy
LS

Check out these 2 pages;

http://alsa.opensrc.org/Emu10k1
http://alsa.opensrc.org/Ca0106

Module for EMU10K1/EMU10k2 based PCI soundcards.
* Sound Blaster Live!
* Sound Blaster PCI 512
* Emu APS (partially supported)
* Sound Blaster Audigy
* Sound Blaster Audigy 2

extin - bitmap of available external inputs for FX8010 (see below, not
needed for Audigy, Audigy 2)
extout - bitmap of available external outputs for FX8010 (see below, not
needed for Audigy, Audigy 2)
seq_ports - allocated sequencer ports (4 by default)
max_synth_voices - limit of voices used for wavetable (64 by default)
max_buffer_size - specifies the maximum size of wavetable/pcm buffers given
in MB unit. Default value is 128.
enable_ir - enable IR

Module supports up to 8 cards and autoprobe.

Input & Output configurations............................[extin/extout]
* Creative Card wo/Digital out......................[0x0003/0x1f03]
* Creative Card w/Digital out.......................[0x0003/0x1f0f]
* Creative Card w/Digital CD in.....................[0x000f/0x1f0f]
* Creative Card wo/Digital out + LiveDrive..........[0x3fc3/0x1fc3]
* Creative Card w/Digital out + LiveDrive...........[0x3fc3/0x1fcf]
* Creative Card w/Digital CD in + LiveDrive.........[0x3fcf/0x1fcf]
* Creative Card wo/Digital out + Digital I/O 2......[0x0fc3/0x1f0f]
* Creative Card w/Digital out + Digital I/O 2.......[0x0fc3/0x1f0f]
* Creative Card w/Digital CD in + Digital I/O 2.....[0x0fcf/0x1f0f]
* Creative Card 5.1/w Digital out + LiveDrive.......[0x3fc3/0x1fff]
* Creative Card 5.1 (c) 2003........................[0x3fc3/0x7cff]
* Creative Card all ins and outs....................[0x3fff/0x7fff]

The ca0106 drivers are far more rudimentary and far less feature rich AFAICT.

I strongly suspect this is the primary cause for your problems especially the
point about the analog being non-functional. Though I would suspect that
Cedega is spitting out the audio in digital form, it may confuse the drivers
do to the fact that it may be trying to push the signal via the ADC component
and therefore kludges from the start. I could be wrong though.

Try to load the drivers for snd-emu10k1, not the old OSS EMU10k1 drivers -
lacking the "snd-" prefix. These have yet another separate set of features
and utilities for them - namely a few tools to load SFX and Effects params.
The ALSA snd-emu10k1 drivers are far less problematic overall IMHO.

HTH, Curtis.



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