Re: Are VIA chipsets (e.g. PT800 / VT8237) somehow defficient?

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Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 04:37:24 GMT

> My situation:
>
> I want to do multi-channel recording and mixing under Linux and I have
> two motherboards:

> Given that each motherboard was using the same processor and the same
> memory, would I really be better off using the P4GE-MX, with all of its
> obvious shortcomings, rather than the Chaintech SPT800 for the purposes
> of doing multi-channel recording and mixing under Linux with an
> x-windows interface such as Ardour or Audacity?
>
> (As an aside, I may end up getting a hi-end audio card, but I have had
> good results recording with onboard audio in the past, and will try that
> first.)

Via is troublesome.

/usr/src/linux/Documentation/sound/VIA-chipset
(where /usr/src/linux is the root of the kernel source tree)

As far as multitrack recording, you want all of your input to come from a
single card. There's apparently some minor differences in clocks/speeds
between even like cards you can't pull input from several cards without
having sync/pitch issues.

Audacity does alright on my via82xx alsa drivers, IF I compile it from
source with --port-audio=v19 so it tries to use alsa natively. With this
configuration, I can do two tracks, maybe three if I lower the bitrate.
On multiple passes since I only have one input channel.

Haven't tried ardour quite yet. Although did get it to run.

Alsa's dmix for via82xx seems to have too much of a latency issue to use
on my 800MHz laptop.

Rosegarden4 does most things if jackd is running at a low bitrate of 11025
(even though the card can do 44100). And you rig timidity to output jackd
and input alsaseq. You can run 44100 if it's a simple midi file.

You can get some info back about your card from /proc/asound/*
What I've determined about mine is I have one capture 24 bit 44100 and one
playback channel 16 bit 44100. Still not sure of the buffer size because
dmix seems to stutter regardless of what size you allocate.

Other via issues.

-dma and 66 bus speeds is difficult to get right, even if you have the
drivers and pass kernel parms at boot.

-sonypi and alsa conflict, you can't run both at the same time. but
sonypi doesn't seem to affect lcd brightness on my vaio anyway.

-even if you get dma and 66 on your drive, /proc still reports bus speed
as 33. And various other /var/log messages regarding it's confusion.

-an i810 onboard video for an intel p3 seems to outperform my agp 2x
mach64 video card for an AMD Duron on my laptop by about 20%, even though
most other machine specs are almost identical.

If you want to do multitrack recording and mixing, by all means get a real
and good sound card. And a fast cpu and loads of ram wont hurt either.

Shadow_7

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