Linus Merges ALSA Into 2.5.4

davster writes "I was just checking out the Linux 2.5 changeset and noticed that Linus has just merged ALSA into his tree. Its about time." CD: Looks like Jaroslav Kysela did the merge work, but Linus obviously allowed it to happen. I'm a happy Alsa user so this looks like a good thing.

Comments

Explanation?

[Mr.Phil]

Can someone explain to me what this means? I've never had trouble with the sound modules that came with the kernel before. Every time I've installed Linux since the 2.0.5 days, my sound cards (always Sound Blasters) have been supported just fine.

Re:Explanation?

[Sarcazmo]

Try this FAQ

Re:Explanation?

[psamuels]

Can someone explain to me what this means? I've never had trouble with the sound modules that came with the kernel before.

• range of hardware - ALSA supports more cards than the existing OSS-based stuff
• features - the first "A" in ALSA is "Advanced". The original OSS API is rather limited as to what it allows an application to do. Doesn't affect me much, because I have a motherboard OPL3SA chip with its crappy FM synthesizer (so MIDI sounds really lousy) - but if you have newer hardware with its leet DSP effects including 3D simulation, etc, the old drivers will never allow an app (read: game) to take full advantage of it. ALSA may not be as advanced as DirectX - I have no idea - but it's a sight better than OSS.
• new infrastructure - ALSA is a sort of "clean slate" and gets rid of many of the annoying limitations of the current architecture, like only letting one app use the card at a time (some current drivers have this limitation even though the hardware supports multiple input channels - sure you can get around this with a sound daemon such as aRts or esd, but still).

Hope this helps..

Re:Explanation?

[Anonymous Coward]

ALSA looks like a much better architecture to me, from what I've seen of it, though my actual experience with it pretty minimal (especially since hardly any apps support it, so I'm always using it in OSS compatibility mode).

It definitely has better buffering, so I never get choppy sound when I'm compiling like I did on slower computers with OSS. It also has software mixing for playing multiple sound streams at once, eliminating the main use for things like esd.

Both of those apply to ALSA in OSS compatibility mode, since I don't really have any apps that support it directly.

Re:Explanation?

[bharath]

> my sound cards *(always Sound Blasters)* have been
> supported just fine.

You more or less answered your question.

Re:Explanation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine some third or fourth year CS student without much real world experience, but pumped up on hormones and Jolt cola. Now instead of writing maybe 100 lines of Pascal or C code to solve a problem, that they feel "elite" and decide to do something different. So instead of the previously mentioned simple code, they build this incredible Dungeons and Dragons complex framework with all sorts of illogical extensions, doo-dads, gee-gaws, and gizmos. That is ALSA in a nutshell. Just imagine the worst aspects of Debian applied to a complete sub-system.

ALSA of reminds me of the famous quote ``If you can persuade them with substance, dazzle 'em with bullshit.''

Re:Explanation?

[SuzanneA]

Doesn't affect me much, because I have a motherboard OPL3SA chip with its crappy FM synthesizer (so MIDI sounds really lousy)

As a perfect example of why Alsa is powerful, take a look at RX/Saturno

Its a Yamaha DX7 emulator that installs itself as a virtual ASLA midi port, that any Alsa MIDI player/app can use.

Basically, the ALSA architecture can, in theory, let you work around your OPL midi limitation. You can install 'virtual' drivers that use wavetable, or whatever, synthesis to provide better MIDI playback.

Re:Explanation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, ALSA's need to split everything up into 2 dozen kernel modules which wouldn't do anything without the presence of the others always struck me as one of the worse examples of modularization run amok.

Re:Explanation?

[Anonymous Coward]

psamuels,

I also have an OPL3SA chip in my 2 1/2 yr. old laptop, and MIDI sounds just fine. I wonder if a little tweaking to your ALSA settings (modules.conf) would help out any... My settings are completely hand-tweaked (i.e., ALSA couldn't detect it on my SuSE 7.1 distro).

Let me know if you need any 0's & 1's.
Eric

Re:Explanation?

[psamuels]

I also have an OPL3SA chip in my 2 1/2 yr. old laptop, and MIDI sounds just fine.

Are you sure it's an OPL3SA (aka YMF-701)? I ask because there is also a newer family of chips called the OPL3SA2, OPL3SA3, and OPL3SAx (aka YMF-715 and YMF-719). I'm not sure but I think these chips feature a wavetable synthesizer called the OPL4, as opposed to the crufty AdLib-compatible OPL3.

I don't know if OSS or ALSA support the OPL4, but if so, and if that's what you have, that could explain why your MIDI sounds decent and mine doesn't.

Well, my workaround is to use timidity for MIDI playback. It does wavetable synthesis completely in software, thus not using the OPL3 at all. Of course, this doesn't help for other applications, though as someone else pointed out, with alsalib there's a hook for user-space software synthesizers.

Re:Explanation?

[Anonymous Coward]

The sound cards might play "just fine", but the large majority of the old Linux kernel OSS drivers are quite poor in implementation quality.

For most of these drivers, the basic read() or write() calls work just fine, but most of the ioctl() calls are broken. For example, it's not uncommon for the "bytes free" ioctl to return a value thats larger than the "size of buffer" ioctl().

This unreliability makes certain features like synchronization impossible to achieve across a large spectrum of independently-implemented drivers. ALSA isn't perfect either, but its a significant improvement.

Re:Explanation?

[Mr.Phil]

Flamebait? I asked an honest question! I've never had to use ALSA cause it's always "Just Worked," so I wanted to know what exactly this change would do for me.

Stupid moderator...

It's about time.

[digitalunity]

Nuf said.

Sweeet!

[laptop006]

Thou I'm still waiting for Pro Tools support...

Re:Sweeet!

[premchai21]

Well, there's Ardour... the CVS build is currently very broken because of a move to use jack, but once that's complete...

good

[vvikram]

finally sound config in linux will no longer be a
Big Thing(tm)

however i wonder why this is big news because there are so many important things which are getting merged. i guess sound has a more generic audience:)

Vikram

Re:good

[psamuels]

however i wonder why this is big news because there are so many important things which are getting merged.

It is a big deal - ALSA has been "on the horizon" with many happy users ever since the late 2.1 days. Jaroslav didn't feel it was ready for prime time by 2.2 and missed the boat with 2.4, so I'm glad ALSA finally made it.

Now if Linus will just accept Keith Owens's new Makefile structure, I'll be a happy man. (Same goes, to a lesser extent, for Eric Raymond's new configuration infrastructure.) He said a year ago it would happen in the 2.5.1 - 2.5.2 timeframe, now it looks like he may be backpedaling ... oh well.

Re:good

[/dev/trash]

Wait. He said it wasn't ready for 2.2, yet still missed 2.4?????

Re:good

[psamuels]

Wait. He said it wasn't ready for 2.2, yet still missed 2.4?????

Yup. Late 2.3 was really weird. Actually it was a lot like other kernel cycles, come to think of it. Linus did the usual feature-freeze-no-wait-let's-put-in-LVM-ok-now-fea ture-freeze thing, and eventually replaced the whole memory manager in the 2.3.99 series somewhere (later replacing that in 2.4.10, as is now common knowledge) ... but really everyone was in a holding pattern figuring Linus would release the real 2.4 Any Day Now, for quite some time. It was an easy boat to miss. Reiserfs missed it, actually - Hans Reiser was up in arms about that - but then Linus let it in in 2.4.1 or 2.4.2 since it was pretty much self-contained.

Re:good

[sconeu]

Same goes, to a lesser extent, for Eric Raymond's new configuration infrastructure

I want the config adventure game!!!!!!

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

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Well, in fact I done stole it from MIT
I didn't get in there, so I figured they owed me!

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I am founder and leader of OSI
Now my Open Source show is really on the road!
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Got plenty dollar bills, at least on paper
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What's going on with Linus?

[felipeal]

I'm not complaining/trolling (actually, I'm happy with the news), but it's interesting to notice what Linus is up to recently:

- he is considering to use BitKeeper
- he accepted the preemptive kernel in the kernel
- he did something else I don't recall now (will search slashdot after this post :)
- he accepted alsa on the kernel

Maybe he is finally realizing that Linux is not only "his toy" anymore...

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Anonymous Coward]

With the possible exception of trying bitkeeper, this is what Linus has been doing for at least the last 6 years that I've been on LKLM.

Even trying bitkeeper isn't especially odd. Its just different because J random linux user knows about it this time because it inexplicably made slashdot.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he is just getting tired, when people push and push and push... you know take your patch and shove it up your kernel and be happy when it becomes crappier than windoze

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Sarcazmo]

The Illuminati got to him. Through their cooperation with the Grays, and the secret rich elite, they have pressured Linus into compliance. They hate MS as much as we do, after all MS is a threat to their power.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even trying bitkeeper isn't especially odd. Its just different because J random linux user knows about it this time because it inexplicably made slashdot.

What are you talking about? Him trying BitKeeper is huge considering his previous professed hatred of source control systems.

Also, it's big news because of all the problems that were plaguing 2.4 for so long, many of which were attributable to him not accepting important patches from people. So BitKeeper was news because it's a step towards resolving those problems.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[charstar]

...or perhaps he's recognizing that these other projects are maturing and can now be consided "worthy" of kernel level inclusion.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[felipeal]

this is what Linus has been doing for at least the last 6 years that I've been on LKLM.

Yeah, I agree. But normally changes of this nature (specially in the case of the preemptive patch) take many releases to get in, but this time they happened very early in the tree (in the .3 and .4 releases).

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Snowfox]

I'm not complaining/trolling (actually, I'm happy with the news), but it's interesting to notice what Linus is up to recently:

- he is considering to use BitKeeper
- he accepted the preemptive kernel in the kernel
- he did something else I don't recall now (will search slashdot after this post :)
- he accepted alsa on the kernel

Maybe he is finally realizing that Linux is not only "his toy" anymore...

I think you're missing something.

Kernel versions with an even number in the second position are meant to be stable. Nothing risky goes in these.

Kernel versions with an odd number in the second position are development versions. This is where risky and innovative new technology can be introduced and experimented with.

Linus only recently opened the 2.5 kernel series. He's been maintaining 2.4. I believe what you're attributing to ownership is his being aware of the fact that a broken "stable" kernel could do terrible damage, and nifty new sound bits and experimental reworking of the task scheduler aren't worth taking that risk.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Dwonis]

Linus hasn't had a real development (odd-minor-numbered) kernel for over a year. Now, he's accepting everything he wanted to before, but didn't because it could break too many things.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[aeil]

Yeah but the pre-emt stuff has been around for a while and has had many happy users. ie: tested -- fairly stable. probably related to a don't fsck up and add a new VM at the end of a development cycle screw up.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[RedWizzard]

Him trying BitKeeper is huge considering his previous professed hatred of source control systems.

Also, it's big news because of all the problems that were plaguing 2.4 for so long, many of which were attributable to him not accepting important patches from people. So BitKeeper was news because it's a step towards resolving those problems.

Professed where? He has said that he doesn't like CVS and that he doesn't think any source control system will help much but he's never said he hates them generally. He has been promising Larry McVoy he'd give BitKeeper a try for more than two years. If he sticks with BK then it'll be news, but at the moment he hasn't changed his mind about source control. And if you think this will make any difference to the issue with dropped patches you're sadly mistaken. That's a seperate problem that has nothing to do with source control.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[BJH]

Linus only recently opened the 2.5 kernel series. He's been maintaining 2.4. I believe what you're attributing to ownership is his being aware of the fact that a broken "stable" kernel could do terrible damage, and nifty new sound bits and experimental reworking of the task scheduler aren't worth taking that risk.

So... how do you explain him ripping out the memory manager in the middle of a stable series and replacing it with entirely new, undocumented code?

I think you're missing something...

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[felipeal]

I think you're missing something.

True. I actually didn't express well my opinion in the first post (I also missed this response to the slashdot submission system or to mozilla 0.9.8 forms :).

Kernel versions with an odd number in the second position are development versions

I know that. What I was surprised with was the quick acceptance of such patches, in particular the preemptive one. Judging by the following interview, I think that even Robert Love was skeptical about it:

Love: Linus said at ALS this year he was interested in the preempt-kernel patch. That doesn't mean anything to me until we are in, though, but it is a good sign.

There is opposition. There are various issues that need to be dealt with. I believe it is a sane move for 2.5. The patch has seen a lot of testing and we have a lot of users.
I do not want to predict whether it will be merged for 2.5. Time will tell.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Prop]

Linus hasn't had a real development (odd-minor-numbered) kernel for over a year. Now, he's accepting everything he wanted to before, but didn't because it could break too many things.

You mean, like, a ....VM ????

..... grin .....

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[nick-less]

Maybe he is finally realizing that Linux is not only "his toy" anymore...

no matter what happens to the kernel, it will always be his toy ;-)

but maybe people will fork of and start making there own toys, who knows

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[uhmmmm]

Kernel versions with an even number in the second position are meant to be stable. Nothing risky goes in these.

And a completely new VM isn't risky ...?

a broken "stable" kernel could do terrible damage

You mean the terrible damage that 2.4.11 just about completely managed not to do?

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[leviramsey]

The Illuminati got to him. Through their cooperation with the Grays, and the secret rich elite, they have pressured Linus into compliance. They hate MS as much as we do, after all MS is a threat to their power.

And where do the Freemasons stand on this issue?

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

...don't leave out the Rosecrusians! (sp?)

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Anonymous Coward]

What an asshole you are. Linux is indeed his and he can do what he wants with it. You got a lot of fucking nerve complaining. Don't like linus kernel don't fucking use it, and make your own. Linus owes nothing to you or anyone else.
Honestly how is the parent modded +5, this guy is a real jerk.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[GrenDel Fuego]

He ripped out the existing 2.4 memory management code to replace it with an updated version of the 2.2 memory management code, not something completely new.

As for documented, from what I've read, neither VM system is very well documented.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Dwonis]

Well, after the VM fiasco, would you make that mistake again?

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[BJH]

It wasn't really an updated version of the 2.2 code, unless by updated you mean "rewritten from scratch but kind of similar if you squint".

And Rik's MM was a lot better documented than AA's.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[jmauro]

But Rik's had the disadvantage of not working very well.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[I_redwolf]

I wasn't aware Linus was maintaning 2.4 anymore. I believe some young hacker is actually maintaining 2.4

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[maxpublic]

Because the old memory manager was crippling in a supposedly stable kernel. Linus did the uncharacteristic thing replacing it to address a rather huge fault in the 2.4 series.

It turns out his decision was the right one.

Max

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[maxpublic]

Please point out any single thing that Linus has said that indicates he believes that Linux is "his toy". A single quote will do.

Max

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[BJH]

Well, AA's MM just plain didn't work for about six releases...

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[BJH]

Was it? The ac kernels with Rik's MM was a lot more stable than Linus's tree a lot quicker.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[maxpublic]

Given that Alan Cox now agrees with Linus, I'll take the endorsement of these two gents over your own claims any day of the week.

Max

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Ilmari]

That was because Linus had been dropping Rik's patches for months. Take a look at the VM in the -ac series, or RedHat's 2.4.9 kernel for what Rik's VM really was capable of.

Not until 2.4.18-pre has the AA VM managed to pass RedHat's stress testing.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alan Cox agrees that Linus is the boss, but that's not the technical argument.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[BJH]

I think you're being deliberately misleading - he agreed that AA's MM has reached the point where it is useable and that it was Linus' right to choose to use it, but he still didn't agree with the original decision.

The fact of the matter is that 2.4.12-acX was a high point in MM stability (witness the RH kernels based on the ac patches), whereas the AA MM gave us a half dozen absolutely abysmal releases of something that was supposed to be a stable kernel. Considering that Rik has said that Linus was dropping patches from him meant to stabilise his 2.4 MM, and then turns around and replaces it with something entirely different, it was probably the incident that most contributed to the "discussion" on l-k regarding patch penguins/source management.

Now, try and imagine what might have happened if Linus had accepted Rik's patches in a timely fashion and he'd been allowed to stabilise it. If Linus had wanted to replace it anyway, he could have done it in 2.5.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[spacefrog]

Kernel versions with an odd number in the second position are development versions. This is where risky and innovative new technology can be introduced and experimented with.

Kind of like Microsoft versions that contain alphanumeric characters! You know, 9's, 2's, X's, etc.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh... even with RedHat 2.4.9 you get those bizarre 5 second long freezes while the VM shits itself trying to sort out the free list. Real classy and stable.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

Because the pre 2.4.10 memory manager stank. The new VM meant that a job I was running used 30-40% less memory, so it could actually fit on our beowulf cluster.

-asb

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you defending Linus' bad decision to not use revision control all these years? Of course anyone - even Linus - will be more productive and create fewer mechanical mistakes when using revision control. And yes - he will drop far fewer patches than he did in the past simply due to the fact that he is using his time more efficiently.

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[maxpublic]

I think you're being deliberately misleading - he agreed that AA's MM has reached the point where it is useable and that it was Linus' right to choose to use it, but he still didn't agree with the original decision.

No, you are. Alan Cox has flat out said that Linus made the right decision and that the new memory manager is better than the old. A quote direct from his diary (http://www.linux.org.uk/diary/):

The great VM dispute really isn't. It went something along the lines of "Putting a new vm in 2.4.10 is crzy", "Probably it was but its done so lets make it work" and at 2.4.14pre8 "See it works" "Yep".

Alan later elaborated on this in an interview backing Linus in both the decision to make the abrupt change and that the new manager worked better than the old.

Now, if you going to contradict Alan himself on what he said, please - invite him to the conversion. I want to see him rip you a new asshole.

Max

Re:What's going on with Linus?

[ArsonSmith]

Linux is just my toy.

-Linux

how about that one?

what is alsa?

[Anonymous Coward]

seriously, this is not a troll, but what the hell is ALSA? Why can't editors simply say "ALSA is an xyz widget that does zyx's" at the bottom of the story?

Re:what is alsa?

[topside420]

For more information on ALSA, visit http://www.alsa-project.org/ as posted within the article body.

Re:what is alsa?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that this is O/T, but remember the last article on /. ? The one about everyone clicking on links blindly?

Vortex2 drivers

[QuoteMstr]

I still have one of the old Aureal Vortex2 cards, which has (in part) a binary-only driver module. Could this be modified to work inside the ALSA framework in 2.6?

Re:Vortex2 drivers

[sbleball]

nope, unless the alsa dudes get the specs to program the vortex2 chip.

I wish them good luck, because my team (the one from the partly-binaries one at sourceforge) never had a glimpse on them.

All we did was based on hocus-pocus and reverse engineering :-P

Re:Vortex2 drivers

[psamuels]

I still have one of the old Aureal Vortex2 cards, which has (in part) a binary-only driver module. Could this be modified to work inside the ALSA framework in 2.6?

Depends - what do you mean by "in part"? I'm assuming the binary-only part is combined with a shim layer which is compiled from source?

If that's the case, it may be possible to rework the shim layer to support the ALSA API, but you might have some trouble getting hackers to do it for you. Many of them are more interested in supporting open hardware, after all. On the other hand, several people worked on winmodem drivers long before anyone provided much documentation for those chips, so perhaps someone will port it for you.

Alternatively, try your hand at porting it yourself, or pay someone to hack on it....

Or you could ask the company to develop ALSA drivers ... oops, I forgot, there is no company. ):

Re:Vortex2 drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Actually...I use a Vortex2 card just fine under Linux. Go to http://aureal.sourceforge.net and grab the latest and greatest via CVS :-)

ASLA?

[PhotoGuy]

It would be nice to have a three or four word description of what ALSA was in the article. (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, for those who don't know.)

It would not only save people a bit of time, but avoid everyone who doesn't know, having to click through to the page, increasing chances of an unnecessary slashdot effect...

-me

Re:ASLA?

[heliocentric]

oooo thanks for clearing that up - I thought it was going to be an automated thing to answer those A/S/L ? questions... but I couldn't figure out what that extra A was for.

Re:ASLA?

[paulbd]

ALSA is a complete redesign of the sound subsystem for Linux. It addresses a number of areas that were irretrievably broken in the old "OSS" design:

• application access was always via direct access to /dev/* nodes, requiring all format conversion and other "fancy" code to reside in the kernel
• no possible generic support for non-interleaved cards
• no uniform API for mmap-based access
• no support for advanced h/w features without highly hw-specific code

When using ALSA, although it remains theoretically possible to use open/read/write/ioctl/close(2) and access /dev/snd/pcm*, all applications will almost certainly use alsa-lib, which provides a flexible, powerful way to access and control audio and MIDI hardware. format conversion, (de|re)interleaving code and many other commonly required operations live in this user space library, leaving the device drivers to simply present a suitably abstract version of the hardware they support. In addition, ALSA addresses many areas of SMP comptability that were unreliable or just plain broken in OSS. Fixing these in OSS was a per-card affair, with some better than others. Under ALSA, the design of the entire system is SMP friendly.

Re:ASLA?

[BJH]

application access was always via direct access to /dev/* nodes, requiring all format conversion and other "fancy" code to reside in the kernel

I'd like to see more info on this - what exactly would require format conversion to be in the kernel? Linus and Alan explicitly rejected such an approach for the v4l code, requiring that all format conversion be done in userspace. I find it hard to believe that the kernel sound code did all conversion between 8/16bit, big-endian/little-endian, etc.

Re:ASLA?

[paulbd]

let me put that another way. the OSS API required that the data delivered to the interface match the way the interface was configured. this results in every app that needs to write floating point data to an interface requiring 16bit samples to handle it themselves. dumb. however, when the OSS API is used with a card for which there is no existing configuration description possible with OSS (the RME Hammerfall is the canonical example), then all the format conversion between the format used in user space (to match the OSS description of the configuration) and the actual hardware setup has to be in the kernel, since nothing interposes between the write(2) call and the driver itself. what was also in the kernel (for example) was the code to drive the OSS "soft synth". there was really nowhere else to put this because of the design of the OSS "sequencer" (which in both ALSA and OSS is really a router and scheduler rather than a "sequencer" in the conventional sense). this is because access to the OSS sequencer is via a /dev/ node, and thus all code related to its operation has to be in kernel space. with the low latency patch and SCHED_{FIFO|RR} scheduling there is no reason to put a soft synth of any type in the kernel. i have been trying to encourage the ALSA sequencer coder(s) to move most of it into user space, for similar reasons. sorry for the misleading suggestion that all format conversion code was in the kernel before.

Re:ASLA?

[BJH]

Thanks for that, it explained the problem nicely.

Re:ASLA?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two people in the world with your RME cards. For the rest of us OSS works fine. Off to do CONFIG_OSS=Y :)

Re:ASLA?

[DustMagnet]

Thanks. I know I'm not elite for admiting it, but I had no clue what ASLA was. Why can't slashdot editor include a few words to explain?

Re:ASLA?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, are all your posts just karma whoring attempts and really idiotic things? I looked at your user profile and most of your posts seem like you never read the story referenced, used the things you talk about, or have two entire brain cells.

Re:ASLA?

[paulbd]

strange that i personally know a dozen then, eh? the OSS API is so broken that your definition of "works fine" must be so limited as to be almost as useless as an SB AWE 64 card, with its bizarre duplex configuration that OSS also cannot model correctly.

Arts?

[svara]

There were some problems with alsa and arts with yamaha ds-xg soundcards... a lot of fixes went into 2.4.x for arts and oss with those cards...

So, does that mean that arts for yamaha ds-xg just got broken?

Re:Arts?

[Humanclone]

Had the same problem, you need to set the sample rate to 48KHz IIRC... then the ds-xg sounds nice. Btw, the oss ds-xg drivers don't have the same quality or functionality as alsa..

Re:Arts?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been trying to fix these problems forever.
How exactly do I set the sample rate?

Re:Arts?

[dinivin]

Btw, the oss ds-xg drivers don't have the same quality or functionality as alsa..

Last time I tried Alsa from CVS (just a couple weeks back), that was definately not true. Alsa didn't support hardware midi support, which the OSS drivers support. In addition, the OSS drivers support both rear and front speakers. The OSS emulation in the Alsa drivers only supported one set on the Yamaha ds-xg cards.

Dinivin

Linus Torvalds Merges Self with Tree!!

[Pedro Picasso]

CYBERSPACE, USA - In a freak accident at Transmeta World Headquarters this afternoon, famed programmer Linus Torvalds -- creator of the Linux operating system kernel -- accidentally merged himself into the kernel's dev tree. When reached for comment, Torvalds seemed only able to respond with "Power overwhelming."

Alan Cox, another prominent GNU/Linux programmer said he thought the merging -- though accidental -- was a good thing. "Now that [Linus]is actually in the kernel he can take advantage of Linux's multitasking and actually handle the work-load that he has. This is a really good thing for the community." Added Cox, "It's also pretty [freaking] weird."

Re:Linus Torvalds Merges Self with Tree!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't that a STNG episode?

Re:Linus Torvalds Merges Self with Tree!!

[Rydia]

I know this is redundant, but that has to be one of the funniest things I've read in a long time. kudos!

Re:Linus Torvalds Merges Self with Tree!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now that [Linus]is actually in the kernel he can take advantage of Linux's multitasking and actually handle the work-load that he has. This is a really good thing for the community." Added Cox, "It's also pretty [freaking] weird."

Of course, with Linus in the kernel; we'll soon have no problems! */me imagines a 'Linus inside' logo sticker for the side of cases in the future*

To anyone who is wondering: this is a Big Deal

[matusa]

Alsa has been hoping for kernel inclusion for _quite_ a long time. If you search mailing list archives, this issue has been around for a while, and has been a serious issue since the 2.0 days IIRC.

Some history, Alsa kindof grew out of the enhanced Gravis ultrasound drivers (not to say that you'll find any code lingering.. it just came out of that project).

That said, this will bump up linux sound a quantum leap.

The major thing that caused ALSA to not be included was stability--their API would change drastically and suddenly all the time (which may be a good thing, though it was done VERY suddenly and often without notice). That aside that has stabilized as they approach a 1.0 release.

Note that there are oss compatability functions, and support for tons of soundcards, so don't think that thinks will stop working.

As a matter of fact, you can expect this to really push things forward (yes I'm repeating myself, but I can't stress this enough). Many good sound apps now already require ALSA. if you check out their website (linked in the main story), amongst other info you can find their supported card matrix.

I tip my hat to the ALSA team, for their great work and perseverance. thanks a million!! We can all look forward to better sound (more features, lower latency, more flexible API, everything you want) now =)

Re:To anyone who is wondering: this is a Big Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

And you think the Sound Blaster Live driver is fun to setup?

Sure - if you just want a stereo sound (with no bass/treble) then just do: modprobe emu10k1 or just set the /etc/modules.conf file accordingly (alias sound emu10k1)

Now - try to enable 5 Channels, Bass/Treble, the settings of which speakers will be more "vocal" - sure you can do these setting in the OSS driver, but it's a PITA to do!

Re:To anyone who is wondering: this is a Big Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

"so don't think that thinks will stop working."

I don't even want to think that thinks will stop working, that is utterly unthinkable.

Re:To anyone who is wondering: this is a Big Deal

[matusa]

"so don't think that thinks will stop working."

unfortunately, thinking does stop working all too often =)...

I meant of course, "so don't think that things will stop working," which is, of course, a phrase barely meeting the thinking level of a 3rd grader, reinforcing my point that thinking stops working =)

Re:To anyone who is wondering: this is a Big Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be pointed out that Quantum Leaps are usually EXTREMELY SMALL, not big. Think about it - an electron going from one orbital to another. Wow - that's a fraction of the diameter of an atom.... :-)

Re:To anyone who is wondering: this is a Big Deal

[mysty]

That is nonsense. Orbitals can overlap. Electrons jump between energy levels; you know, between distinct eigenvalues of Hamilton operators.

Re:To anyone who is wondering: this is a Big Deal

[oznoid]

It is a big deal. It'll make a big difference for those of us doing speech technology; the free OSS drivers were always weak on full-duplex, and to do speech in/out, we need it. Congrats to everyone involved -- which is guess is all of us.

Re:To anyone who is wondering: this is a Big Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Pass me the crack pipe, dude!

Re:To anyone who is wondering: this is a Big Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Quitefrankly, or the average person, ALSA stinks. It is a big nasty mess.

Not impressed with ALSA

[Anonymous Coward]

To be completely honest, I've tried ALSA on several occasions.

Each and every time I reverted back to the 'old' OSS type modules.

Despite whatever virtues many people see in ALSA, I have yet to see it actually do ANYTHING that OSS sound modules can't. (And in a great many cases, where OSS Modules do things that ALSA ones don't.)

For instance, one of the most popular sound cards in current computers is the SB Live! series of cards. Due to the popularity of the EMU10k1-based boards, I would assume would get more development attention. And yet, while all the sources (for each type of module) are available, the EMU10K1 ALSA driver still can't handle the mixer settings anywhere near as well as the OSS module. I mean - this is the MIXER, people -- it controls volume. And ALSA can't even get that working. But the OSS module - Works like a charm!

Re:Not impressed with ALSA

[Anonymous Coward]

I started using ALSA because the OSS EMU10K1 driver in the kernel was broken. And kept getting broken and fixed and broken and fixed over and over (and that has continued into 2.4).

ALSA has worked for me since I started using it. I never had any mixer problems at all.

Furthermore, one really nice feature that it has that the OSS modules don't is the ability to play multiple sound streams at once via software mixing. That alone is enough to make me want to use it.

Plus the architecture is a lot cleaner.

Re:Not impressed with ALSA

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, the OSS driver has handled multple sound streams for just under TWO YEARS now.

And, the performance is flawless.

The alsa driver? Scratchy, interlaced, ugly mess.

Re:Not impressed with ALSA

[kilrogg]

Furthermore, one really nice feature that it has that the OSS modules don't is the ability to play multiple sound streams at once via software mixing. That alone is enough to make me want to use it.

This is false, the OSS-compatible driver has been able to handle multi-opens since Nov 1999, the same month they were opensourced ( main.c rev 1.22). Alsa got emu10k1 support in ~january 2000. Furthermore, sound stream mixing is done by the emu10k1, not software.

Re:Not impressed with ALSA

[Jeremy Erwin]

With ALSA mixers, one can (theoretically) control hundreds of sound card functioss. For instance, modern sound cards can mix (in hardware) dozens of individual sound streams. The ALSA mixers allow the user to control the volume/balance of each stream. Absurdly complicated-- yes, but occasionally quite useful.

Re:Not impressed with ALSA

[henrik ostman]

My Gravis card have NEVER worked with OSS, so i gave ALSA a try. And have loved it ever since! When i later bought a SB Live i switched to OSS only to find it did'nt work either, so i went back to ALSA. And still using it.. I'm now celebrating the marrige between 2.5.4 and ALSA, may they live happy ever after. =) BTW. ALSA had support for full duplex LOOONG before OSS did!

Please say they fixed the emu10k1 mixer & MIDI

[Cerlyn]

The last time I tried ALSA (0.9.0beta9) with a Sound Blaster Live!, I was confounded with the way they presented the mixer setup. It provided me with dozens of individual effect and audio sends, "mutes" that actually turned things on, confusingly named controls for laypeople, etc. While their wavetable MIDI worked for the most part, I have songs that suddenly mute one or more channels, with notes always cut short (no sustains).

Fortunately, the wonderful thing about the Linux kernel is that one can often find alternative (OSS_Free, etc.) drivers. I'm not putting ALSA down; I like how it is progressing, and it has the wavetable support that the OSS Free-style driver presently lacks. Hopefully ALSA's inclusion into 2.5 will help coax more people to find bugs, add cards, and fix problems.

(Before anyone flames me, I did file bug reports to ALSA. Many projects seems to be drowning in them; if you want to get into open source development and cannot code, perhaps you could help verify reported bugs!)

ALSA does not impress me

[Anonymous Coward]

After using OSS sound for years, I tried ALSA. And I find that ALSA is a true software horror.

• ALSA is overly complex
• ALSA is extremely buggy
• ALSA hardware support is spotty.
• ALSA is very poorly documented.
• ALSA is "over-engineered"
• ALSA is the ultimate example of the problem of "design by committee"

Normally I take those Windows vs. Linux arguments with a grain of salt. But here is one case where Windows really has Linux licked--ALSA is a step in the wrong direction. It was not designed with the ordinary end-user in mind. It was clearly "designed" (using a loose definition of "design") by code-hacks who made a difficult problem more obtuse, buggy, and complex. Instead of simplicity, they have created a tangled, illogical snare for those naive enough to even consider using it.

Re:ALSA does not impress me

[paulbd]

Your anonymous coward status doesn't impress me. ALSA was designed by essentially 2 people for the audio side and 2-3 for the MIDI side. What committee? Either you were asleep or you were never a part of the discussions on alsa-devel that led to the current design. Any complexity it presents is a result of a desire to be able to handle any and all audio interfaces, which a simpler structure (and we tried many) could not do. No, ALSA was not designed with the ordinary end-user in mind. ALSA is a set of device drivers. It is part of the kernel, which provides mechanism, not policy, for user space. The stuff that will be designed for users mostly doesn't exist yet because too many audio developers have continued to write code around the OSS API. they can't be blamed entirely - the ALSA API was incredibly unstable for some time. yes, its poorly documented. no its not extremely buggy. hardware support is wider than OSS and in some specific areas, deeper.

KDE and Yahmaha 724

[CtrlPhreak]

I had problems with the latest KDE's ARTs and ALSA in the past. As soon as YMF724 became available in the kernel itself, the problems seemed to dissapear. Will there be a choice for people like me between the ALSA implementation and the old one? Or have all the problems been fixed in ALSA? I always liked alsa as a strong and stable driver system in the past, so this has to be good news.

The end of linux as we love and know it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unreal, i can't believe he did it. Linus, you are giving up your child, why?

Don't let the unwashed dirty your succulent code, it is much to pristine... That support does not belong in the kernel. You must abstract it out into a kernel level driver. Be smart and use mapped memory and kernel objects to do this. How it is now is just a lowly hack that doesn't deserver your attention. Tanenbaum was right!

great changes back to the old days

[Lumpy]

WOOO! I can have a soundblaster without damned modules in embedded systems again! OSS was a grand project but it sucked royally because it forced module use.

Many times I had to reverse patch the kernel to get soundblaster back in without OSS. Now with ALSA I can compile the sound driver back into the kernel and fling off the last bit of module code that was worthless for embedded systems.

Re:great changes back to the old days

[(startx)]

I've *never* gone modular with the soundblaster drivers, ever. this includes a sb16isa with SCSI2, a sb16pci, and a sblive!. maybe your just to stupid to read documentation?

Re:great changes back to the old days

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, I'm a dumb FUCK too!.
Let's see the soundblaster driver is a OSS module, and OSS modules HAVE to have the main OSS subsection as a module. after reading the oss.txt in the kernel docs and seeing the requirement that it has to be compiled as a module... (wow, OSS in it's self is required to be a module... I guess their FAQ and DOCS lie... like you said, you are a linux god, probably linux himself....)

So shit for brains... if it's an OSS module you have to use it as a module. the soundblaster driver covers about 30 different cards and only someone as stupid as you would assume that the soundblaster driver is only for the sb16.

It's assholes like you that make people think that linux is just a toy or Haker D00dz mess.

please quit using it, you give it a bad name.

Re:great changes back to the old days

[BJH]

What on Earth are you talking about? Until recently (as in 2.2.17 or so) I always compiled the sb driver in.

Re:great changes back to the old days

[Anonymous Coward]

2.2.17 is recent? what cave have you lived in?
most everyone in embedded research have been in the 2.4.x world for the past year.

Re:great changes back to the old days

[BJH]

2.2.17 is recent if you've been using Linux since 1.3.x days... and what does you supposedly being in "embedded research" (can I call you an embedded researcher? Is that some sort of mutant gnome that lives in a box?) have to do with whether or not OSS can be compiled in?

Re:great changes back to the old days

[Anonymous Coward]

"Embedded researcher" means he's got his head stuck up his supervisor's ass.

Re:great changes back to the old days

[LunaticLeo]

OSS was a grand project but it sucked royally because it forced module use.

Then you will LOVE the 2.5+ kernels. Soon the kernel will be module only. They are creating a new kernel boot format that will pack all the modules with the kernel. There will be a few more tricks to keep modules close in memory (for platforms which distinguish short jumps from long ones). Wallah! no more bifurcated init code (one code for compiled in and another for modules).

Good luck for all the module haters. :)

Re:great changes back to the old days

[iriki]

From the ALSA Driver Installation Guide:

Before installing this driver, it will be helpful to read carefully the documentation for insmod, modprobe, kmod and for the isapnp module if you have an ISA PnP soundcard.

I have an ISA PnP soundcard and I never, _EVER_ had to use/learn (althought I should) all that utilities.. isapnp is great when it cames to configure a Supra 33.6k modem, but it's _NOT_ needed to make the OSS drivers work with my SoundBlaster AWE 32 Isa card. All I need to do is run sndconfig in RedHat, pass some parameters like we all used to do in the DOS world: Address 220, Irq 5, dma 1 :) and voila, this is linus torvalds and i pronounce linux as .. linux! rotfl!!

All this crap just to state that I couldn't get ALSA to work on my LinuxFromScratch 3.1 home-made distro. Go figure :) So for me to hear my dear .mp3s in LFS the only solution was a copy/paste from the rh /etc/modules.conf to lfs /etc/modules.conf. happy flaming .)

Re:LINUX QUESTION

[ralmeida]

I know you were kidding, but take a look at Lunix.

USB Audio?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know if the Alsa drivers will work with the kernel USB Audio driver?

woah,

[Anonymous Coward]

ALSA works?! I thought it was like wine and only work on the developers machine or said to work in email and newsgroups!!!

Re:woah,

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using it for 1.5 years now, and I can honestly say I never once have had a single problem.

Though, reading the slashdot comments, it seems like I might be the only one, but I swear! It's true!

Re:woah,

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you! You have summed up ALSA rather nicely.

ALSA doesn't work for the average person.

ALSA = Advanced Linux Sound Architecture

[Stonehead]

ALSA has been merged into the development Linux kernel, version 2.5.5-pre1, not 2.5.4 as mentioned in the title. Bad Slashdot editors.. :(
Jaroslav Kysela, a Czech developer paid by SuSE, has worked for years to create and lead the ALSA project. It's GPL - its code has always been intended to go into the mainstream kernel and replace the OSS code. Linus has just done so.
Okay, what does it do: ALSA is just a set of utilities, general code and drivers for soundcards. After 4Front Technologies went commercial with OSS some years ago, Linux did not have supported GPLed soundcard drivers anymore. The commercial OSS-drivers are up-to-date, but those in the Linux kernel are old. A lot of obscure soundcards are currently only supported under Linux by either adding the commercial binary OSS modules, or adding the ALSA modules to your kernel. For example, my Aztech 2320 and Mediaforte cards that wouldn't even work with the legacy Win95 drivers (newer aren't to be found anywhere), nor with the old OSS, but they work very cleanly with ALSA since two years. Believe me, the ALSA codebase rocks. It has been stable for a long time and is good enough to add to your 2.4 kernel yourself. Visit the web site, it's just as easy as compiling any other module. And uh, before you all flood the ALSA mailinglists, start alsamixer first before testing, because all channels start muted as default :)

Re:ALSA = Advanced Linux Sound Architecture

[Anonymous Coward]

Jaroslav Kysela, a Czech developer paid by SuSE, has worked for years to create and lead the ALSA project

Someone better tell Jaro to find another line of work. Maybe if he changes his name, no one will know his guilt.

Re:ALSA = Advanced Linux Sound Architecture

[psamuels]

ALSA has been merged into the development Linux kernel, version 2.5.5-pre1, not 2.5.4 as mentioned in the title. Bad Slashdot editors.. :(

The mistake was probably due to the BK changelog, which quotes Jaroslav's email message:

Integrate ALSA into v2.5.4

Jaroslav

(@*#&$^(*& llllaaaammmmeeeennnneeeessssssss ffffiiiilllltttteeeerrrr)

Re:ALSA = Advanced Linux Sound Architecture

[I_redwolf]

Ahhh opensource.creative.com?

0.5?

[spt]

Version 0.5?

Whatever happened to the "always wait until version 3" rule of stable computing?

Re:0.5?

[Sarcazmo]

Then call it version 5.0 and be happy.

Numbers are meaningless when everyone has their own numbering schemes.

Re:0.5?

[delta407]

So, version 3 equals stable? Let's see here... remember Windows 3.0? How about DOS 3.0? Heck, the Linux kernel isn't 3.0.

Re:0.5?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux releases faster, so the version you want is 0.3...

Re:0.5?

[Grax]

The version 3 rule only applies to projects that are not free. Most developers don't like to give a project a 1.0 until it really is ready to go. Many free projects are perfectly usable with version numbers higher than 0.8 (OpenSSL for example is at version 0.9.6).

A non-free product cannot get away with using those kind of version numbers. No one will purchase a version with a number lower than 1.0.

Re:0.5?

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD is 4.5. How about Apple? They're at version 10 already! :-)

Re:0.5?

[archen]

Well linux itself is only at version 2.5 so who cares? Of course one has to wonder, if version numbers really do have something to do with software evolution, why doesn't emacs rule the universe?

How cross-platform is ALSA?

[Snowfox]

It was my understanding that the ALSA group was only interested in supporting PC hardware.

Has this changed? If not, is it really wanted in the stock Linux kernel yet? Have any used ALSA with non-PC hardware yet?

Re:How cross-platform is ALSA?

[paulbd]

there are Mac/PPC drivers in the tree already, and some of the PCI-based cards have been tested under Linux on the Alpha.

Re:How cross-platform is ALSA?

[Ewasx]

I've been able to use the alsa drivers with a GUS soundcard on an old alpha without any problems or modifications. So I think they're pretty portable.

Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just thinking about circumventing the "one program controlling sound" problem last week.

Thinking about how amazingly fast (GNU/)Linux evolves, we then read about more and more developers crying out for patch acceptance (which means this evolution will only accelerate).

Wow! I mean, WOW!

I just wonder how will Linux be in two or three years?

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

here

This is a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing : especially for less standard card users. Good example is CS4237b (P233 notebooks)
which really rocks with ALSA and sux with OSS.
I hope ALSA won't break any working driver too
(like my USB Labtec 712).

Kubus

ALSA in any distro default kernels?

[mlinksva]

Si, no, plans? Anyone know? I hope they don't all wait for 2.6.

Re:ALSA in any distro default kernels?

[d3xt3r]

Yep in SuSE at least since 7.0. It's their default sound system.

Re:ALSA in any distro default kernels?

[leviramsey]

Mandrake includes ALSA as well.

Re:ALSA in any distro default kernels?

[mlinksva]

Didn't think of it before posting, but distrowatch indicates whether and what version each of a few dozen distros ship with (not just ALSA, dozens of packages). Yep, as two followups have indicated, SuSE and Mandrake have included ALSA for awhile. That's a good thing. Don't know why someone thought I was trolling, it was an honest (if lazy) question.

Re:KDE myths

[Anonymous Coward]

To put it blutantly KDE toolbars and general gui design are/have always been a mess.

Funny, exactly the same thing can be said of Gnome.

towards multimedia

[ncoder]

This and the peemptiple patch makes you think linus is lining up towards multimedia.

Good to know.

Re:towards multimedia

[subgeek]

that would be the next logical step if linux is to make inroads on the desktop market. linux is pretty well proven on servers, so why not make it more attractive on the desktop?

Re:You know what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please prost your homosexuel fantasyies and storyies so i may mastrbate to them. My close male freind has gone on a business tripp and i am feeling loneley toonight. Thank u.

-Robb "CmdrTaco" Malda

Great news for MIDI people

[dmouritsendk]

In my experince ALSA provides great MIDI support, and it seems like they support MIDI on alot more cards than the OSS(example: I first learned about ALSA when i couldnt get OSS to work with the midiport on a Yamaha waveforce).

Also, I really like the fact that it places all the sound devices under /dev/snd/ , structure is good :)

0.5 or 0.9 version of ALSA?

[AltoidsSuck]

Many of the newer (and better) sound cards are not supported in 0.5. Midiman cards for instance are only supported in the "beta" 0.9 version.

Otherwise, this is definitely good news.

Re:0.5 or 0.9 version of ALSA?

[Anonymous Coward]

according to the diffs, the version string is 0.9.0beta10.
It would probably have been a bad idea to include the now obsolete version into a _developer_ kernel...

Re:0.5 or 0.9 version of ALSA?

[Jeremy Erwin]

The 0.9 API for alsalib (the support libraries) is very different from the 0.5 API. I do hope the API is stable.

x86-64!

[psamuels]

Did anyone notice that Linus also integrated x86-64? Now AMD's vapor 64-bit offering is on an equal footing with Intel's vapid 64-bit offering.

(OT: According to a local SGI sales rep, a lot of the big Unix vendors got burned by the whole Itanium fiasco. I said I was curious a couple years ago why the vendors were all so quick to drop their own chips in favor of ia64, and he said "because we were stupid".)

I'm not sure I agree with creating a whole new arch for x86-64 rather than making it conditional stuff within i386. Yes, I realise, this was already done by sparc64, mips64 and ppc64, but that doesn't make it right. I think I would prefer the approach used by arm and superh - having sub-architectures within the main arch framework. Oh well, I guess that's why I'm not Linus.

Re:x86-64!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because most, if not all, big companies are run by CEOs and Chairmen who are just as clueless as Kenneth Lay claims that he is. And they think that we plebes are just as stupid as they are (until an Enron or Whitewater rolls around and a few of the crooks actually get slapped on the wrist). Anyhow, most of us low level grunts weren't stupid enough to fall for that IA-64 crap; and that's the problem, we're too smart and too nice to make big money selling vapor....Who's Dilbert? Who's John Galt?

Re:x86-64!

[Mr Z]

I think the idea of a whole separate arch directory for x86-64 is that it really is a different architecture that will have different assembly code and rather different OS-level issues when it comes to context switches and so on. I'd imagine its conceptually similar to the ext2 vs. ext3 directory split.

--Joe

Joke?

[Penguinoflight]

I hope this is a joke, because wating until version 3 is only done by microsoft. A product should be pretty usable by 0.5 or 0.6.

Re:Linux!? It's shit, I tell you!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I care" --Luke Skywalker

CS4624 Support?

[ewhac]

So, um... Is Crystal SoundFusion CS4624 support working yet?

I have a Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo II (replaced my AWE64). It wasn't clear if the OSS modules included with kernel 2.2.19 supported it, so I decided to give ALSA a try. I downloaded and installed ALSA 0.5 some time ago. While the modules detected my card and configured themselves just fine, I got no sound out of the speakers. (Yes, I used alsamixer to turn up the volume on the appropriate channels.)

Someone on the alsa-user mailing list suggested it might have something to do with the "power management" on the newer chip, and to try ALSA 0.9.something (alpha-ware), which has code to handle it. So I did. It compiled, installed, detected my card, and configured itself just fine. alsamixer opens and lets me fool with sliders without trouble. Even the OSS compatibility modules come up fine. But I still can't hear anything.

I haven't touched it since then, as I've been consumed by other distractions. Clearly I'm doing something wrong. But I'm at a complete loss as to what it might be.

Schwab

Re:CS4624 Support?

[nitehorse]

NICE card. I used the 2.4.x CS4624 drivers, and they worked ok - you should probably give them a try yourself.

Re:CS4624 Support?

[groove10]

I got the card (Turtle Beach Santa Cruz with CS4624 chip) to work in the 2.2.19 kernel by adding the module. I also got it working in the 2.4 kernel with the standard OSS modules as well. I'm sure it'll be supported in ALSA 0.9 or whatever will be merged into the kernel. At least this way I can have multiple sources use the sound card instead of just XMMS.

Re:CS4624 Support?

[DarkMan]

Sounds like you've not unmuted the audio channels.

Muteing is separate from the volume, in alsamixer I think the key is M to mute/unmute.

Do excuse if you already tried that, but you haven't mentioned it, and it is one of the gotcha's with ALSA (Anyone know why they mute by default?)

Ok, redundant...

[MaxwellsSilverHammer]

It **IS** about damn time! I have been needing to use ALSA myself, and it would be great to have it already rolled into a distro. This admittedly, relatively cheap pc has a sound card that Linux doesn't support and I haven't wanted to go out and buy another one just so it would work with Linux (RH 7).

Re:Ok, redundant...

[AYEq]

ALSA is a part of SUSE and DEBIAN

Re:BIG MISTAKE!

[paulbd]

You're either a troll or you don't know anything about something you write with an authoritative tone about. The design of ALSA with respect to SMP systems, spin locking and interlocking access is probably better than almost any existing system in the kernel. As for deferrment of interrupt handling, thats entirely a function of individual "lowlevel" card drivers, and its possible that there are better ways for certain drivers to handle their hardware's interrupt. However, audio hardware is real-time in that it continues to run whether the CPU services it promptly or not. This requires a rather different kind of design than the one used for, say, disk drives. finally, the proof is in the pudding. many of us have been using ALSA for several years, and it has worked better on both UP and SMP systems than the old OSS API, and without any bizarre kernel issues.

Sounds good but

[drink85cent]

Good to see an advancement in the multimedia capabilities of a reliable system.

Now maybe one day linux users will get to play what people call a "Video Game" on their computer. Then linux monkies can get rid of their horribly useful winblows partition after all

Re:Sounds good but

[psamuels]

Good to see an advancement in the multimedia capabilities of a reliable system.

Yeah. And this dovetails nicely with the recent /. story on the open source Direct3D v8. Maybe someone will write a DirectSound implementation using alsalib now, and do the rest of DirectX based on the new input layer (merged in 2.5.3 or so) ... then eventually game companies will be able to say, like Oracle did years ago, "we just typed make".

Re:Sounds good but

[forgeeks]

I do play 'Video Games' on my linux desktop. I have successfuly installed Counter-Strike and get around 65fps.

dave

Re:LINUX QUESTION

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll never let JonKatz forget his friend Junis, won't you?

Re:Please merge realtime patches into Linux!

[Anonymous Coward]

True, although some regular low frequency interrupt is still necessary for the PLL algorithms when you are using NTP for clock synchronization.

Mind you, it is very light-weight, I'd be very happy with 4 Hz for this (it has to be strictly higher than 1 Hz for technical reasons which would be too long to explain here). A power of 2 is better since NTP algorithms are designed to work that way (see the contortions to make it work at 100Hz, and the maths are not even exact).

Re:Adam Venus sucks his penis

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that this is offtopic. But his horse is named Alsa, and Alsa likes to be merged!!!

Two points:

[be-fan]

1) Wow! Is Linux 2.6 going to kick ass or what! We've got in the stock kernel:
- New block-io layer
- ALSA
- Preemption + lock breaking
- New driver model with more transparency
- VM reworking
- New page cache (RSN, currently in -dj tree)
Plus patches that easy to add
- O(1) scheduler
- XFS
Is Linux going to be a great desktop (oh, server too...) kernel or what!

2) Is Linus insane? With all those changes, we'll be lucky to see 2.6 sometime this decade! And the end result won't likely be the most stable thing ever.

Still, I like living on the edge, so I'll probably end up switching to 2.5 at the tail end of the cycle.

Re:Two points:

[psamuels]

We've got in the stock kernel: [deletia]

You forgot new input device layer. If we get the matching new console layer, multi-head will be pretty much built in. (Yes, I know XFree86 supports multiple displays - I'm talking about multiple sets of keyboard+mouse+video running independently of each other. SGI has sold dual-console workstations for a long time - why can't I do this with Linux, y'know?)

Oh yeah, there's also USB 2.0, but that's more of a driver update than a whole new thing.

...And x86-64 (also in 2.5.5pre1), so we're ready for the Hammer when it comes out.

...And better filesystem threading. The unstoppable Al Viro just added fine-grained locking to a couple more VFS calls in 2.5.5pre1. I guess it isn't really news, more of a work in progress; he has been improving VFS scalability since mid-to-late 2.3.

Re:Two points:

[be-fan]

...And x86-64 (also in 2.5.5pre1), so we're ready for the Hammer when it comes out.
>>>>
That's what I love about Linux ;) And it took Microsoft how long after the i386 came out to actually release a 32-bit OS?

Re:Two points:

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

Nice try, but Windows 2000 is already running on Hammer test systems.

Re:Two points:

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I predict that 2.6 will actually be stable when it comes out unlike 2.4 which JUST stablized now. There have been a few basic lingering problems that have just been fixed. Granted these new 2.5 features will take some debugging, but really we now have a really really solid foundation on which to build. I don't feel so far that the 2.4-2.6 transition will be as radical as the 2.2-2.4, which frankley came out broke.

Re:Two points:

[daserver]

O(1) is also in there :) 2.5.4 also includes the new ide drivers which which run very smoothly for me (it is also in -ac).

Re:Two points:

[Arandir]

Hmm, does that mean Linux 2.4 sucks now? Glad you cleared that one up. Ever since 2.0 everyone's been telling "just wait until..."

Re:Two points:

[Error27]

>> O(1) scheduler

That's already included.

I bet that XFS will get included before 2.6 also.

>>With all those changes, we'll be lucky to see 2.6 sometime this decade! And the end result won't likely be the most stable thing ever.

Because 2.4 took so long, tons of stuff was already finished by the time 2.5 forked.

Re:Two points:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but can you get it _now_?

Yeah.

Re:Two points:

[psamuels]

Nice try, but Windows 2000 is already running on Hammer test systems.

So, if we're intent on "competing with Microsoft", the issue then becomes quality of implementation. In the Linux case, most userspace utilities will probably not be taking advantage of 64-bit - but the pieces are in place in case a particular app could benefit from them, in which case it's probably no more than a recompile.

The kernel, OTOH, is 64-bit, I believe.

I bring this up because Windows NT supported the Alpha CPU for years - but essentially treated it as a 32-bit CPU, for greater compatibility with their original and most popular port. Microsoft didn't have an actual 64-bit OS, I understand, until NT5 for ia64. Linux has been basically "pure 64-bit" on Alpha (and UltraSPARC, and more recently others) from the beginning - somewhere around '93 or '94.

So ... OK, Windows 2000 runs on x86-64 - but is it actually using 64-bit instructions where appropriate, or is it treating the x86-64 as a mere Athlon? Your guess is as good as mine.

(What am I saying? "Mere Athlon"? I'd love to have a "mere Athlon".)

Re:Two points:

[PD]

If I were Linus, I'd do a feature freeze right now, get all the bugs out over the next few months, and release Linux 2.6 this summer.

Can gnome drop esd?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this mean that Gnome can replace esd by just using features of ALSA? Of course it'll be a while before 2.6 is available...

Can we dump aRts and esd now?

[be-fan]

The Linux sound situation is really retarded. There are tons of APIs and sound servers and none of them work! Sound-servers in general are dumb ideas that went away when soundcards with hardware mixers were invented. Don't get me wrong, a server is necessary to allow media apps to communicate with each other, but something like aRts (which doesn't take advantage of sound card special features) ties all the nifty media framework stuff to a stupid sound multiplexer. Yikes. For 99% of applications, sound isn't a difficult things. There is no reason for all these sound servers to be in existance. God dammit, how many programming interfaces do you need to occasionally play "Ding!" when mail arrives?

Re:Can we dump aRts and esd now?

[puetzk]

esd - yes, it can die. It was only a mixer.

arts - no, and arts likes alsa rather better than it liked OSS. Alsa lets it see much more of the soundcard's abilities, so it can stop doing simple things itself and focus in effects and codec work (ie, it's real purpose).

Re:Can we dump aRts and esd now?

[diamondc]

you're forgetting about the remote capabilities of
those two sound servers.. maybe like 5% of the people
using arts/esd are using it though. plus i have an
older isa sound card that just cannot play two
sounds at once, so i'd still like esd running.

Re:Can we dump aRts and esd now?

[Junta]

Two things:
Network capability
and
Hardware limitations.
Typically, hardware cards don't do more thon 3 or four sound channels at once. Sure, more than we can usually listen two, but still, a lot more limited than these programs.
Besides, though alsa supported it first, I can have multiple applications directly use dsp without software daemons, though it is an sb live..
Alsa is far more advanced and we finally get to see it coming mainstream (first it was going to be in 2.1, then put off to 2.3, and finally, and 2.5 we see it. Of course, the OSS is less and less important as more of the sound modules lie outside the OSS every release... (EMU10k1, VIA audio, etc...)

Re:Can we dump aRts and esd now?

[Error27]

>> The Linux sound situation is really retarded.

Correct.

There was an interesting discussion on the alsa-devel list in January about "Alsa and the future of sound on Linux." Paul Davis the author of jackit.sf.net wrote some pretty convincing emails that a call back system is better than the popular Linux way with read/write like a file.

Jackit is designed for high end audio but it's really similar to Apple's CoreAudio. The problem is that most Linux developers don't want to mess around with callbacks and multi-threaded programming. And quite frankly most sound applications don't require such a high level of quality.

A good thing to do would be to change aRts to write to jack. That way you could use jack for the high end and aRts for basic mp3s etc.

Unfortunately jack is not finished yet.

Re:Can we dump aRts and esd now?

[be-fan]

Umm, the SB Live! does 131 hardware channels.
Also, network capability can be done without a server, it just requires intelligence on the part of the audio library.

Re:Can we dump aRts and esd now?

[be-fan]

Sure aRts could still SUPPORT software mixing, but should it force EVERYONE to use it?

Re:What's going on with Linus - he's retiring ...

[konmaskisin]

... once he cleans house for a while and modularizes all the interfaces nicely and a cool python based gui/curses/none config system is ready (i.e. when linux will have reached 2.5.99 ... 2 years from now) he will begin to ascend the mountain leaving his creation behind. After all there will no longer be a big pile of source called the "linux kernel" maintained by Linus at that point. There will be a refined and perfected architecture into which pieces of code, drivers modules can be inserted in ways that require zero or no changes to other modules. It will be as easy to write drivers and kernel modules as it is to write apache modules and CGI scripts. Kernel modules in java and python will be all the rage ... written by grade school kids and retired grannies :-)

The much ballyhooed and silly myth of Linux being unmaintainable by one person will be proven moot once and for all. At that point the kernel will be "maintained" by a vast decentralized and motly unorganized army of engineers, and hackers because Linus will have designed it so. One or two people per module
who may never even talk to another mdoule driver owners ... that's the secret that's coming. Their will be an "official" Linux on sourceforge say. Any code or modules to be included will only compile and work in the official kernel if it plugs into the source control and build system nicely (which will require documentation strings and a clean code style) all enforced by machine. The core code will only change every 6 months to a year ... or maybe never. After all BSDi kernel hasn't changed too much nor QNX ... when something is good and done it stays the same for a while.

Linux will have reached maturity and will reign the world during its coming golden era. ... 10 years will pass and then some hacker will come along and ....

Re:LINUX QUESTION

[Anonymous Coward]

Any references you can spare for us that don't know what you're talking about?

ha

[Dr. Awktagon]

Oh man, that's damn funny, good job!

Lameness filter really really really sucksxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Lameness filter sure sucks Lameness filter definitely sucks Lameness filter stinks

Re:ha

[joekool]

Actually , it's there to prevent posts like yours, which are the equivalant of the classic AOL "me to!"

Note: this comment here bacause I keep hearing complaints about the lameness filter. It may not work all the time, but it triggers meaybe you should consider that a hint!

;-}

Re:ha

[Waffle Iron]

Me too!

Re:ha

[Dr. Awktagon]

Yes, I agree!

;-)

Help with the current version of alsa.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been a very happy alsa user for over a year now and I enjoy the sound quality greatly. However ever since the .9x series the volume controls in all user programs cease to function. (such as xmms) I have to change the volume level through alsamixer. I do have ossemulation installed. Does anyone have any ideas?

Card Support Issues?

[enderak]

Hopefully by the time I end up using a 2.5 kernel, my sound card will be properly supported with ALSA.. and if not, will this raise issues when using OSS instead?

Don't you understand??

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the linux way. Have 50 different ways of doing something and confuse everyone. Seriously the same reason for so many sound servers is the same reason distros ship with 30 text editors. As time has gone on, I have been feeling more and more that for linux to "make it", we need less choice sometimes. But hey what do I know I'm just joe user.

Re:Don't you understand??

[Anonymous Coward]

Your analogy would work if the sound system and applications worked. Vi, vim, elvis, nvi, Emacs, Joe, Jed, etc. are all GOOD editors. Not a single one of the Linux sound infrastructures or apps works that well. And that is the motivation behind including ALSA. ALSA might still suck, but it's one step closer to having a real sound infrastructure. Anyhow, I use BeOS for all of my serial A/V work.

Re:What's going on with [FNORD]

[Mr Z]

With their feet at right angles to each other. They're really quite orthogonal to the issue, always being on the square you know.

--Joe

Re:Anyone ever notice how much Linux is posted?

[Anonymous Coward]

So go read bsdtoday fucktard. This is a linux site if you don't like...well you know where your dildo is.

The real ALSA

[Anonymous Coward]

alt.sex.linux.anchovies

Re:The real ALSA

[Anonymous Coward]

wouldn't it be more like:

alt.linux.sex.anal

just to keep things in the correct order?

[OT] Patching 2.5.4

[elohim]

How are you supposed to patch this thing? I follow exactly what's in the README, gzip -cd patchXX.gz | patch -p0, but it gives errors all over the place to the effect of "file could not be found. Which file would you like to patch?" What's going on?

Re:[OT] Patching 2.5.4

[webhat]

did you just type 'gzip -cd patchXX.gz | patch -p0"???

Re:[OT] Patching 2.5.4

[Anonymous Coward]

copy your patch in /usr/src directory and
just try:
/usr/src/linux/scripts/patch-kernel linux

greets from Bulgaria
feminem

Re:[OT] Patching 2.5.4

[elohim]

No, I typed the full patch name... but I will try the suggestion in the next post...

Audigy

[schnogg]

All i want is audigy support. p-p-p-phullleeze

Re:Audigy

[crond]

You can get the drivers from Creative at opensource.creative.com.

My roommate has one of those cards, and it works. Don't know if all the fancy features is supported, though.

--
Tore Anderson

Re:Audigy

[Anonymous Coward]

I have one as well. The driver works fine for most things and actually supports front and back speakers. When you get the driver from creative you will have to edit the makefile to turn on the Audigy support.

Multiple Cards

[donglekey]

So how has support for multiple cards changed? I don't know anything about Linux's sound system, but I ask because I know it is making headway in high end 3D work, and it could start to be a driving force in high end audio work (and various other sound applications) if the groundwork was in place.

Re:Multiple Cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Multiple soundcards were possible with OSS, and they are a blast to use with ALSA. I have three cards in my system: a Midiman Audiophile for serious work, SBLive for Quake3 (doesn't work with the Audiophile) and the crappy Via onboard sound, just in case all else breaks. Add to this at least one, sometimes more, virtual midi cards to play softsynths like PD (rules!) via a midi sequencer and you have more than 4 sound/midi devices running in parallel under ALSA.

This rocks.

Re:Multiple Cards

[donglekey]

I have a Midiman Audiophile 2496 and it actually works really well under QIII in win 2000.

Non-modular kernel and ALSA

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean I will be able to compile the ALSA driver I need (intel8x0 for a SiS 7012) into the kernel instead of fighting with modules?

If so, it's installpkg lx254.tgz time! :)

There is no Linus.

[EvilAlien]

Linus is a myth. There is no Linus, never was. He is a fictional person created to explain the spontaneous evolution of Linux from code snippets by pure chance. Linus is a crutch used by those who require a neat and tidy explanation for this phenomenom.

Furthermore, there is no meaning to Linux. It just is. Its complex, its dynamic, its really difficult to explain and predict in detail. The VM fiasco was in fact a stronger species of VM being introduced into the environment by accident. We believe that it may have been smuggled in by a BSD user, and having no strong natural enemies it was vulnerable to, simply pushed out the weaker indigenous VM species. Again, this is all chance.

When will we wake up and stop attempting to explain things by invoking some higher power, creator, kernel maintainer, what-have-you? Wake up, darwin wasn't talking about odd monkey-creatures in Madagascar, he was talking about Linux.

Re:There is no Linus.

[sir99]

But Linus is real!!! I can prove it because I talked to him!!! And everything in Just For Fun is really true!!! Next you'll be trying to tell me that Linux is billions of years old.

Re:There is no Linus.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the code that coalesced into Linux is billions of years old. It was forged in the interiors of ancient stars which at the end of their lives exploded and scattered their code threw the Cosmos.

Re:Please say they fixed the emu10k1 mixer & M

[Phexro]

Yes, I was also stymied by the way ALSA presents the SBLive! mixer. Having a second-hand card without any documentation doesn't help me at all. Can anyone explain why the headphone right/left mute buttons are labeled 'Headphone LFE1' (for the Right channel) and 'Headphone Center 1' (for Left)? Why can't I record from my LiveDrive! Line in? What crack-smoker coded this shit?

Don't know about other versions, but 0.9.0beta9 & beta10 are both like this.

Re:Drain You

[Anonymous Coward]

Nirvana destroyed _both_ metal, rock, and pop music as it were when they broke through. And how the hell can something that tops the charts be considered "alternative"? And Kurt "Ooooh I feel so sorry for myself that I have to tell the whole world" Cobain was just a damn (untalented) loser anyway,

Drivers?

[iabervon]

The ALSA interface code is unquestionably much better; one of the main reasons for ALSA was to get a saner interface. Many of the drivers are better, and there are drivers for some cards that OSS didn't support at all. However, there are also some cards with more stable OSS drivers. Are there any plans to merge the driver set, keeping the better of the overlapping drivers, and spliting the driver choice from the interface choice? The reports I've heard say that the Yamaha OSS drivers are more stable, so it would be nice to stick with them without losing the up-to-date interface.

Linus says...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a happy Alsa user so this looks like a good thing.

Linus to the world: Y'all come back now, y'hear?

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

alsa has to do with the sound drivers or some shit on linux machines. nothing with usb you fag. don't you even read any of the stories on slashdot or do you just ignore everything on topic?

Mad moderation

[palfreman]

Why is that a troll? Far too many people are running about with downward moderation powers. In this case the parent is a perfectly normal question - so it gets modded to troll! Meaningless.

Watch out for lamness filter spaces!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:cNL_acIt_UMC: slashdot.org/features/01/11/17/204207.shtml+JonKat z+Junis+download+movies+commodore&hl=en&ie=utf-8

Using google to highlight the words.. :)

mod parent up dammit!.. (n/t)

[Anonymous Coward]

NT I said!..

ALSA is great - worked better than OSS for me

[benb]

My soundcard - a Terratec DMX XFire 1024 - is supported by OSS/Free, but I had severe problems with the quality - skips, cracks etc.. Once I switched to ALSA, which also had a driver for this card, most of the problems were gone. Since I switched to the 2.4 kernel, I never had these problems again.

ALSA rocks! It's about time that it finally gets into the kernel.

The interface problems were noticeable. however. I still didn't sort out, which Debian packages to use with my self-compiled module.

P.S. Now, when will KGI resurrect and get into the kernel?

JACK + ALSA = future PCM subsystem for Linux!

[Adnans]

ALSA = lowlevel soundcard drivers
JACK = highlevel audio (PCM) API

So JACK is using ALSA to output audio. The nice thing about JACK is that it's the first serious attempt in the Linux (Unix) world to get a professional audio API in the hands of developers. SGI's dmSDK was promising but that project seem to have stalled, i.e. no open development going on (no CVS). JACK also replaces arts and esd when it comes to multiplexing audio output. The only problem is that developers may find they have to redesign their whole audio application in order to fit inside the JACK (callback based) framework.

A typical Linux/Unix audio application opens a special file and starts writing the audio data to it. The application will block on the write() (or read() when recording). This works fine for simple things like playing an mp3 or doing some window manager sound. It gets hairy when you try to sync multiple audio applications and achieve low latency at the same time. With jack this is as easy as pie, because the applications are driven by the JACK callback. So when it is time for the soundcard to get its next buffer JACK simple calls the process() function of all the connected audio applications. Every application has the chance to insert its own piece of audio data (or inspect what's already there), all app will always write the exact same amount of samples per callback, which keeps them in perfect sync. You can also do cool things like create your own ports and wire JACK aware apps together. In short, it rocks :-) ..and it makes Linux a worthy competitor to OS X's CoreAudio.

More on this at the JACK website

Shameless plug :-) AlsaPlayer was the first released JACK app, mainly because of its BeOS heritage (the internals work exactly like the ancient BeOS audio_server, which was callback based).

-adnans

Re:JACK + ALSA = future PCM subsystem for Linux!

[msouth]

With jack this is as easy as pie, because the applications are driven by the JACK callback. So when it is
time for the soundcard to get its next buffer JACK simple calls the process() function of all the connected audio
applications.

Ok, I can see how this is good and all, but I think you're forgetting about geek culture here--on of the main draws of this API is if you don't know it...[you fill in the rest, I don't feel that I can bear the responsibility]

uh oh

[DrSkwid]

Sorry for a "What about me" post.

I can't help wonder how this will affect cross platform unix development of multimedia apps. New Linux stuff will do doubt start being targetted to ALSA only (and quite right too, some things *need* a unified architecture). I did a google for ALSA FreeBSD but nothing looked very hopeful (I mean the L is an L for a reason!).

I'd be unhappy if Id engines stopped being FreeBSD friendly.

I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Re:uh oh

[RKloti]

Since the main part of the API is library-based, I suppose it would be possible to write some kind of compatibility layer...

2.5 roadmap

[crond]

This is great, I like ALSA. :-)

Also, this confirms that the 2.5 roadmap is fairly accurate. In yesterday's update, ALSA was listed as "ready [for inclusion]".

Other goodies are listed as "ready", are:

• IBM's JFS
• CML2
• lm-sensors
• User-mode Linux

In addition, things like SGI's XFS, LVM v2, and a new VM from Rik van Riel (with rmap) is in beta and likely to enter "ready" soon.

Check it out for yourself, it's very interesting stuff. :-)

--
Tore Anderson

Re:BIG MISTAKE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell is the above marked flamebait and its parent marked "+5"? - it should be the other way around. Some OSS employees obviously have mod points... Apparently Microsoft aren't the only company underhanded enough to stoop to astroturfing...

ALSA never worked for me...

[mystran]

..and there is on going development for things like audigy with the old system so hopefully they keep the old style drivers and modules as an option...

So, the question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

When will OSS be removed from 2.5 ?

ESD sucks...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope esd becomes obsolete in the near future, I am frustrated on how it is included in seamlessly every part of the GUI, Gnome makes use of esd and it doesn't do it very well. I had to uninstall gnome due lousy interoperability with alsa, since I wasn't able to use esd-alsa packages nor even compile it because of some illegit linkage problem, it was mainly a problem child. I am happy with alsa, but as is there are a bit too few programs with true support for it. Or whenever there is a program, it supports only some version (older or newer) of alsa than the one I'm using at the time (0.5.2 I recall is the one I am using now).

I hope the versioning problem becomes obsolete too in the near future. I can't wait to start using the latest'n'greatest music software as soon these problems dissolve.

- Voice of Ambience -

Re:ESD sucks...

[enterfornone]

ESD is only there to get around the limitations of OSS (ie the fact that only one app can open the sound device at once). I'm not sure but I beleive ALSA doesn't have this limitation.

Re:Please say they fixed the emu10k1 mixer & M

[_SkiBum_]

Because that same connector is probable used for the sub/center out if you want to use 5.1 sound.

vapor from AMD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clawhammer examples are shipping

This is a good thing...

[jyak]

As someone new to linux and knowing very little about programming this is good news to hear. When I did a linux install for multiple distros I keep having problems with my onboard sound (AC97). I couldn't hear anything. I heard about ALSA, downloaded the lastest version, installed the utilities. With the help of some documents and readmes, I edited some files and unmuted all the sound channels. It was fairly simple and in no time at all I was listening to my music again.

My ALSA problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked ALSA at first, particularly things like the ability to capture the audio output from any program. But then I realized that all the choppiness I was getting in xmovie was due to using the ALSA drivers -- if I switched back to OSS, it went away. ALSA was also incompatible with mtv for some reason.

Will OSS still remain available after ALSA is integrated?

Re:BIG MISTAKE!

[paulbd]

the design of ALSA divides it into 3 layers. alsa-lib lives in user space, and provides a friendlier API for audio+MIDI than POSIX' open/read/write/close/ioctl calls. within the kernel there is the "midlevel" layer which is generic across all support hardware, and then the "lowlevel" layer which contains drivers specific to certain hardware. The lowlevel drivers are the responsibility of specific authors and can be changed, fixed, altered and otherwise evolved quite independently of the midlevel ALSA code. Thats why the specific operation of a given lowlevel driver is not the point - if it defers interrupt handling incorrectly, or not at all, then just that low level driver is broken, not ALSA in general. if you believe that the mid-level code contains the potential for a priority inversion, then you should explain why in some detail. if you have examples of low-level drivers that have similar issues, it would be wise to point them out. however, my impression is that you don't know how ALSA has been designed, nor its record of successful operation to date. when priority inversion is a possibility, its generally not that hard to induce. i have never seen any report of this on alsa-devel or linux-kernel since ALSA begain development.

What good is OSS with HZ = 100 in x86 kernel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great - you have a wonderful sound subsystem - but it skips a lot due to the fact that it does not get enough time slices because HZ in the Linux kernel is set to 100.
Linus - get with the program - either do any with HZ altogether or bump it up to 1024 (as it is on Alpha and Sparc).
In this age of multi GHz x86 machines HZ = 100 is an embarassment. Realtime programs (like MIDI) can not use stock Linux kernels, and cannot get a foothold on Linux.

USB Audio support ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does ALSA support USB Audio?
No. AFAIK, it's not still supported.

My usb speaker works well by OSS, and my pci sound card does well by ALSA. But when I tried some months ago, both OSS and ALSA's modules could not be loaded into kernel at the same time . So I decided to use OSS ...

Does anyone knows the solution of this problem?

Re:USB Audio support ?

[Raggensdraddle]

You might want to check out a 1394 Wildwire CC that supports what you want. There are a lot of companies around and one of them must have solution for you. Its just me randy little unqualified opinion. Of course I might be talking through a cocked hat and blind drunk in the foggy night. So, what do I know, anyway? Probably Nuffin.

Re:Anyone ever notice how much Linux is posted?

[amhax]

w0w! fucktard. That sure is clever. Anyway, seeing as how this isn't a Linux site, that sure seems kinda strange. It never was a Linux site, the only Linux influence is the owners love of Linux and the fact that OSDN was once a major part of VA Linux Systems. However, you, being the proverbial genious with the huge comprehension of the English language, should have known that. Seeing as how in the last four posts I have made, I have somehow managed to get my karma lowered to -3, noone will probably ever read this post.

The only intelligent thing you have mentioned at all in the above post was going to BSDToday. I am going to do just that. Fuck Slashdot and the idiotic Linux kiddiots.

diff strokes

[fishbowl]

The overwhelming majority of sound card users seems to have one or two applications in mind and don't see others. Basically, we want to hear music coming out of speakers or headphones. We'd like to have the encoding for multichannel audio (e.g., theatre sound) but "IP" problems tend to make that goal unattainable. Other than that, though, 16bit 2-channel 44.1khz audio seems to be acceptable. And we should be able to take it for granted. It should NOT take months of study and effort to get that far.

Now, there are other types of users who need a very different feature set from the same system.

Musicians want to use the capability of the computer for multitrack recording. We'd like to be able to use cards with hardware mixers, cards that record 24bit audio, cards that use standard timecode protocols required for video and all other professional recording. We'd like to be able to do every step of a production in a fully digital format, never using an ADC/DAC device.

Some of us would also like to be able to use the computer as a musical instrument. The potential is there for the home computer to outperform and vastly outfeature the expensive samplers, analog modelling synths, and multitrack digital recorders whose pricetags shut out most musicians in the working class.

A feature like "64 simultaneous voices" sounds like overkill, until you're trying to record a piano wavetable on a romantic piece with a sustain pedal. At that point, 64 voices is like CGA compared to SVGA.

compatibility of sound cards.

[Raggensdraddle]

It is good to hear from Creative that their Platinum Audigy EX is Linux friendly. Just might buy of them. That does not square with the fact that Promise Technology is turning a blind eye to Linus OSs. You might want to think about that when you're considering a new 1394 Wildwire contoller card. In a letter, the rep said: "We're considering support Linux, but that I know of, not anytime soon." Add to that the apparent needle of most hardware companies aren't even looking at arguably the most powerful and facile Linux OS, Mandrake 8.1. I don't think MandrakeSoft is liking this at all.

So does this mean...

[Trogre]

..we will finally be able to play DooM etc with realtime hardware MIDI music, and not some Timidity-style emulator?

Sound support for linux has always appeared to be several years behind the times. Anything beyond playing straight-through wavs and oggs on the wave device seems to go straight into the too-hard basket.

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Re:So does this mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it doesn't mean that. Only cards with a supported Midi synthesizer will not need a software synth. But today's computers really are fast enough to have a little midi software synth running, while playing Doom, or even while playing something more CPU-needing like RTCW. And iiwusynth is IMO a fully qaulified Soundblaster replacment.

Re:So does this mean...

[Trogre]

"Only cards with a supported Midi synthesizer will not need a software synth"

.. so the Sound Blaster Midi synthesizer(as opposed to wavetable synthesis), which has been present on all sound blaster cards since day dot, will be useless under Linux in favour of software emulation?
Did I read this correctly?

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Hmm.... ever read 'Wyrm'?

[Anonymous Coward]

:)

If only they'd do the same for graphics...

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh*

Linux 2.5 boxes w/ALSA

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!

Oh, oh, has to be said...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Professed where? He has said that he doesn't
> like CVS and that he doesn't think any source
> control system will help much but he's never
> said he hates them generally.

"We have always been at war with the East"
-- 1984, George Orwell

8-)

Re:Anyone ever notice how much Linux is posted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please keep in mind that Linux is a success, *BSD is a failure. Let's think about that for a minute.

So why now? Why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?

The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shround over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

Re:Please say they fixed the emu10k1 mixer & M

[Phexro]

no, if you want to do 5.1 or dts, you should be using the s/pdif output with an external decoder.

Re:BIG MISTAKE!

[Stonehead]

Now that this is off the front page, it might indeed be wise to add this. (Lots of trolls here.. therefore posting at +2, even if it's only a shameless confession)
I posted this message to Slashdot as an answer to all the people who asked 'ALSA? Okay, but what does it DO?' I have been able to help a few people on the alsa-user mailinglist, but I do not have insight in the code base. I should not have yelled 'Believe me, the ALSA code base rocks.' as that was only based on about nine different cards that I have myself gotten working on different machines with ALSA and often not with OSS in the last two years. I successfully tested the commercial OSS drivers on SuSE 6.4 a while ago, I do not work for them or something like that.
I haven't lied anywhere. I am not a troll; I want to tell people why I like ALSA even if I don't understand the inner design. Sorry if I might have an authoritative tone on that. You win from me any time. :) Anyway, I learnt from your message, though I don't understand your point on priority inversion. I would guess that the low-level layer defines whether what cards work. That is ALSA-specific and new with this merge, isn't it?
Thanks and see you!

Re:BIG MISTAKE!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL! Your comment has been subjected to a priority inversion! ROFL

TROLLS ARE WATCHING U!