Re: better quality mp3 player?

From: Dances With Crows (danSPANceswitTRAPhcrows_at_gmail.com)
Date: 02/08/05 

Date: 8 Feb 2005 22:17:50 GMT

On 8 Feb 2005 13:28:09 -0800, news@celticbear.com staggered into the
Black Sun and said:
> Michael Heiming wrote:
>> No problems here xmms works with superior quality for me, we can
>> hopefully rule out your hardware if sound works in doze probably. So
>> this leaves us with your soundcard/modules and the ouput plug-in used
>> by xmms,
> # lsmod | grep snd
> snd_intel8x0 33249 1
> snd_ac97_codec 67489 1 snd_intel8x0
> snd_pcm_oss 47989 0
> snd_mixer_oss 17089 1 snd_pcm_oss
> snd_pcm 93001 4 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
> snd_timer 29125 1 snd_pcm
> snd 52645 7
>
> # cat /proc/asound/oss/sndstat
[snip]
> This is a lot of information! I had no idea any of this was available,
> like this. (I really need to take some serious Linux courses or
> something.)

"Serious Linux courses"? All the crap you need is on your system
already; it's just a matter of having enough time to read all the man
pages/READMEs and so forth. This may not be possible for you, though.
You can always grab the latest paper edition of _Running Linux_ if
you're looking for course materials, though.

> Refering to another's post, what is "overdriving PCM"?

Good question. Context?

> # hdparm -v /dev/hda2

Er? hdparm operates on disks, not partitions; usually you write "hdparm
/dev/hda".

> /dev/hda2:
> multcount = 16 (on) IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
> unmaskirq = 0 (off) using_dma = 1 (on)

Right. You said that you heard skipping/stuttering sometimes when
playing mp3s, right? If that's the case, you might want to set
unmaskirq to 1 and IO_support to 1. "hdparm -u1 -c1 -d1 /dev/hd[abcd]"
as root should do the trick. Unmasking interrupts on your IDE chains
will actually make the disks perform a little more slowly, but disk
activity won't affect userspace programs as much.

> I looked into the XMMS prefs, and I see that my output plugin is: aRts
> (libarts.so) So, I switched it to: ALSA (linalsa.so)
> If I leave it on default device, I still get massive distortion. If I
> change it to: Intel ICH5 : ICH5(hw:0,0) I get a device error. If I
> change it to: Intel ICH5 : ICH5 - IEC958 (hw:0,4) no error and it
> appears to play, as the time and progress slider bar moves, but no
> sound.
>
> However, if I change the plugin to: OSS (libOSS.so) bad distortion as
> well.

The ALSA modules may be having problems with this card, setting
registers incorrectly or doing something stupid. @#$%ing soldered-to-
the-motherboard crap sound chips. What's the output of "uname -a"?

> Perhaps if I can get suggestions on what is generally the best output
> plugin to use, I can keep playing around with other stuff.

If you're using ALSA, the appropriate output plugin for xmms is the one
that references ALSA. aRts is KDE's sound server, and you should use
that if you want to. The "Intel ICH5" devices are probably not the
correct devices to use.

> just so much to tweak with, and so much that's probably a red
> herring and time waster. So all advice is appreciated!

Check your mixer levels in kmix or whatever mixer program you use.
If you're using ALSA, there should be a tab called "settings" or
"special" or something right after the output and input tabs. Make sure
these are set properly, or fiddle with them and see if the output
quality improves. HTH, 

-- 
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin /    mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com     /                Hire me! 
-----------------------------/ http://crow202.dyndns.org/~mhgraham/resume

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