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

From: Shadow_7 (wwwshadow7_at_yaNOhoo.comNULL)
Date: 02/24/05 

Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 14:19:35 GMT

> Generally, I agree that if you want to do "real" work with sound, get a
> "real" soundcard. I have had 2 AC97 motherboards, Linux wouldn't produce
> sound with either. I got a cheap Vibra 128 card (because it was recommended
> by an Australian Linux book). The Windows installer CD claims that it will
> do all kinds of fancy things. And I am only a "normal" user, so I can't
> comment on any continuing motherboard issues. Mandrake's Rosegarden RPM
> installs but won't start on my system (1600 MHz Athlon XP, 256 MB SDRAM).
>
> Doug.

I really should get a real card someday. But my best desktop is still a P
II 300MHz. Which is still better than any computer which I've had on the
job as an IT developer, even as late as 2002.

Granted that my via sound card was not easy to setup. None of the so
called automated tools seemed to work. I guess if you want alsa to
autodetect and install, you'll need to buy SuSE which is one of the
original sponsors/creators of alsa.

Rosegarden (without the 4) is generally a very old version of rosegarden
in the 2.2 versionage. Rosegarden4 is the current pretty version. And
the package in your distro should be notated accordingly.
http://rosegardenmusic.com/ It's a kde app type, so it's probably best
run in kde and with artsd. But you can run it in other environments. For
me I have to take the following steps.

jacd -d alsa -S -H -r 11025 -d hw:0
(puts it in 16 bit and low bitrate mode to give better latency, otherwise
-d alsa should suffice)

timidity --output-16bit -Oj -iA
(makes sure it uses 16 bit and the alsaseq interface)
(assuming alsa is compiled with --with-sequencer=yes)

rosegarden4
(the above assumes you're not running any soundcard wrappers like artsd,
esd, ... rosegarden will actually launch artsd if it can't find anything
suitable)

I know it's not very pretty. But with this configuration, I can have
rosegarden play midi's (with some latency/lag). Without having to export
to .mid and using timidity to play them from the command line.

Shadow_7