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It's good for serving, but will never really have a place for general users.

When people say never it's usually more of a wish than anything. However I think Linux will shatter this wish. Audio stuff is slow to come, but once there is a critical mass for this (soon) it will happen. The ALSA Project is doing a very good job in laying the foundation for this.

http://opensource.creative.com
Or even:
http://www.alsa-project.org if ALSA is more your thing.

Nick

BeOS does not play CDs that way. It doesn't use the audio cable at all. This allows all kinds of digital manipulations of the cd audio signal in real time. In fact, one thing they like to demo is the ability to play CDs at variable speeds, including backwards :-)

Uhm, check out AlsaPlayer. That's an open source Linux player that does much the same (it alsa plays MP3 s backwards). Perhaps we should coach RedHat into using that to demo Linux, weeh! That'll surely double or tripple the user base (overnight)! Weeeeh!

On my buddies Rev 7 Creative 128 board, installing ALSA seemed to get sound working great.

The ALSA web site is at:

www.alsa-project.org

All they ask is for enough specs to write a good device driver. They don't need blueprints for the card. So all the companies need to do is supply some specs and help to ALSA, only a few companies seem willing to do even this small task. Do they not want to sell more hardware!? Seems not.

That's exactly the problem. XMMS looks too much like WinAmp (good as WinAmp is). It doesn't offer much else. There are loads of other players around like: AlsaPlayer Has much cooler plugins than XMMS imho. KJofol is being ported to Linux. You tell me if that doesn't look better than WinAmp!

Full Quote:

" We are happy to announce that the next major version of the Jazz++ midi sequencer will be distributed under an Open Source license. This applies to versions for both Linux and Windows platforms. We expect to release this software by medio february 2000.
Among the news in version 4.x will be an ALSA driver for Linux and enhancements on the GUI side (including a GTK+ version for Linux).
Open Source not only means that the software is free to use, it also gives the users freedom to enhance the software and correct bugs. In general this leads to a better product and a dedicated user community. We sincerely hope this will happen also to Jazz++ and that all users will benifit from this change of license terms.
We give this information some time in advance to give new Jazz++ users a chance to decide whether to wait for the Open Source release. It will of course be possible to buy licenses for version 3.x up to the time of the new release in order to be able to use the current version. There will however be no refund of licenses bought in this period.
JAZZ++ is a full featured, audio capable midi sequencer for Windows and Linux. JAZZ++ offers a lot of functions normally only found in expensive sequencer software, and is used by professionals and hobby musicians all over the world. For further information, see http://www.jazzware.com

Slashdot lags seven days behind the initial announcement, duh.

I believe ALSA supports that card. It's really not all that scary to install, either, if you read the howto (speaking as someone who did it yesterday to get his Soundblaster Live! to work).

Anyway, the most recent fruits of Creative's newfound enlightenment can be had here:

http://opensource.creative.com/

and here:

http://www.alsa-project.org/ Don't let the version # fool you, ALSA has been awesome on w/ my GUS Max since I started using it 6-8 months ago. You may want to save ALSA for a future go-round, though, until you're feel comfortable configuring drivers not included as part of the stock kernel, as it's completely redone (and backward compatible) sound support for Linux, which is planned to be the next generation drivers and API. Also, it has a user mailing list in case you'd like a helping hand.

Both have documentation about how to go about setting it up, so given the inclination, you can have sound right now instead of waiting for the next round of distro updates. :)

Btw, kernel configuration and compiling really isn't very difficult - it's primarily choosing what devices to support, and a few protocols (and each option has a friendly little help display if you're unsure). For more information, you can visit the Linux Documentation Project at http://www.linuxdoc.org/ and LinuxNewbie.org at (oddly enough) http://www.linuxnewbie.org/- home of the NHFs (Newbieized Help files "in plain english")

Now I know the alsa team are making a lot of progress, but what if redhat bought opensound and freed it? That would mean a hell of a lot more sound support for linux, something that every distro desparately needs. Just a thought.

Don't complain - the Hoontech 4DWave is a good card, and is the preferred card for ALSA.

Hoontech's card uses two digital chips: The Trident Microsystems
4DWave-NX and the Sigmatel STAC9708.
Programming information is available for these chips, in the datasheet for the STAC9708 and here for the 4DWave.

p.s. If you don't like Hoontech, other manufacturers also have 4DWave-NX cards.

Don't complain - the Hoontech 4DWave is a good card, and is the preferred card for ALSA.

Hoontech's card uses two digital chips: The Trident Microsystems
4DWave-NX and the Sigmatel STAC9708.
Programming information is available for these chips, in the datasheet for the STAC9708 and here for the 4DWave.

p.s. If you don't like Hoontech, other manufacturers also have 4DWave-NX cards.

"Lucky to get it working on anything apart from a particular spec of machine"?

If you've got a sound app working in one place using the standard OSSLite subsystem, it should work everywhere (including on the systems of those enlightened folks using ALSA, which is a far better system, for their sound). Look at Speak Freely -- I can't see ViaVoice requiring many sound system features it doesn't support, and it works quite well.

I chose the Creative Sound Blaster PCI 64. It's cheap, does not use up many ressources and is well supported with the newer (2.2.x) Kernels.
The ALSA Project also supports the chip on the card (Ensoniq ES1370 or ES1371) but I never used the ALSA drivers.

VFAT is read/write in RH6.0 (2.2.5-15) IIRC.

Having looked at ALSA's web site, I'd say that it has a way to go before it replaces OSS/Free. It still does not support many soundcards (or at least, the list on their site isn't particularly long) and the fact that the latest release (this month) is still a 0.x probably shouldn't fill anyone with confidence.

Aside: Linus has adopted Microsoft version numbering, he's just not telling anybody. That '.' between the two and the four really stands for '00' - which means, of course, that the 2.4 kernel will actually be released in 2006.

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This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along.

Wait, Win95 has a "broad selection of industry recognized multimedia standards"? I see OpenGL and DirectX being the only ones used today. Not exactly a broad selection. And DC has WinCE and Sega's proprietary thing, so no broad selection there, either.

Developers don't want a broad selection of standards, they want one standard, so they only have to support one driver. If the Linux world wants to see more games, then it needs one good API for graphics, and one good API for sound (how about Alsa?). In particular, fast graphics in X is a requirement.

Of course, the thing that will really draw the game companies is more users. Without users, APIs are useless. X needs to be really easy to setup for a wide variety of graphics cards and monitors before there will be more users. The basic Linux install has gotten quite easy, but the X configuration still needs work.
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Nope, there is a competing GPL'd sound system ALSA at http://www.alsa-project.org. Why split efforts?

It appear you need to see the The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture project.

You may want to take a look at the Hoontech 4D Wave NX card, which uses the trident chipset of the same name. Trident has released a GPL'd driver, so it should work "out of the box" with ALSA ( Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). The Hoontech card has S/PDIF out (optical & coaxial). You can buy it from http://www.audiencedp.com for $47 plus $5 S&H (I did). You can also try to buy direct from Hoontech, but I am not sure how they handle the oversea shippings (unless you live in Korea :).

Anyone like to support AlsaPlayer?

Hehe ;-)

> You are right though, quality audio support in
> Linux is lacking. However, BeOS
> blows Winblows out of the water if you want to
> do cool stuff with sound.

Do your homework before spreading FUD. IMHO ALSA, is better than MMAPI and DirectSound. You can get much lower audio latency in Linux with ALSA than Winblows, it's easier to program and for realtime performance there's RT/Linux (although I'm not sure if it's possible to use it with ALSA drivers) It's not the support that is lacking, but the applications. I'm doing something about it whenever I have spare time.

If you meant support for high-end cards, it's certainly true that they usually don't have drivers for Linux, but it may change if more companies start to supply drivers and hopefully write audio software for Linux.

Fortunately, 4front's days are numbered. :)

--ac

Well, the first and most important one I can think of is ALSA replacing OSS as the soundsystem. FINALLY some decent, modular multimedia and MIDI functionality in Linux! :)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

The ALSA drivers should support the SB 128 very well.

-adnans

mpg123 -s song.mp3 | aplay -r -m

Not quite as cool, but still a command line :)
--ac