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Installing/Configuring ALSA Sound Modules In Debian
GonzoJohn writes "Linux Orbit explains how: "A very common question that comes up when trying Debian GNU/Linux is how the heck do you get Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (a.k.a. ALSA) sound modules set up properly? In this HOWTO we'll show you how to compile and install the ALSA kernel modules, and then setup things using the ALSA Debian script so that modules are automatically loaded and unloaded, and your mixer levels are saved and restored on boot up. Here are some things you'll need to have before you start this HOWTO""
IM FIRST
Im the BEST
1st != 10^90
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
Subject line says it all...
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
what;s wrong Debian guys... can't you just apt-get everything an it magically works?
my RPM-based distro installed everything for me, so I never had to worry about it.
If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
wget slashdot.org >> /dev/audio
Nice site, however, this CSS property they use when you mouse over a link, it is _really_ slow on my computer with both Mozilla and IE. Webmaster, if you are reading this, please change that CSS property of onMouseOver you got there, to a simple color change.
As for ALSA, I find it difficult to configure and install. I tried doing it on Mandrake some weeks back, and it was a pain in the butt. Not sure if it is easier on Debian.
1.) Install linux 2.) Format your computer 3.) Install windows XP
--- YEAH I SAW SPARKS FLY!! FROM THE CORNER OF MY EEEYYYEEE!!!
Gentoo Linux has had a similar guide for months, without coverage on the front page of Slashdot. (And, if I may say so, the Gentoo way is cleaner.)
Maybe I'm missing something, but why/how is this news?
One of the biggest turn offs for new users to Linux is the general lack of sound support which either
1) Requires recompiling the kernel and crossing your fingers.
2) Requires you to use the beasts known as ALSA and crossing your fingers.
Operating systems are no longer stale command prompts with beeps and blurps -- they are full mutlimedia systems, and having working sound support in the first install should be a priority for Linux distributions.
When Linux newbies have a lack of HOWTOs and sound support is diffuclt to implement, at best they are going to fool around with Linux for a day or two and then go back to their MP3 collection under Windows.
Sound card detection and setup happens invisibly and automatically on several other distributions. Why is this article worth mentioning? What would actually be newsworthy would be some Debian people swallowing their pride and incorporating some of the excellent automatic hardware detection, setup and installation routines that the other distro developers have produced. That's what free and open software is all about, right?
The article tends to mention alot of other HOW-TO's in its introduction and recommend you read them first, then it does into expousing the benefits of using the 2.5.x kernel config.
In other worlds, intereting read.
It does provide information about Sarge and all...
Also,*Note: Britney Spears is not part of the KDREV option, so if you do leave out KDREV it will look like...
That's interesting.
News coming soon to Slashdot near you:
* How to configure PPP for dialup on Red Hat
* "Mail sending 101" on Slackware
* Beginner's guide to configuring your network
C'mon.
I spent a week getting sound to work on my system by using Google and experimenting. Then they decide to make it easy so that my accomplishment would mean nothing to all of the newbies who show up.
I can hear/see it now:
"Hey guys, do YOU have sound on your system? I do!", I exclaim, with beaming pride.
"Uh, yeah whatever dude," they would say. "I got sound working too. Dumbass."
I can no longer consider myself 1337. B-(
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
I'm a longtime slackware fan who's considering switching to gentoo.
Anything largely different between the two distros? I am assuming gentoo doesn't use the BSD-style init that slackware does, for instance.
Thanks!
(I'd download and try it, but I almost pay by the MB at home, so I'd rather know if it's worth the effort to drive somewhere where I can download it for free or not)
for folks who have work to do ... eh Padre? WTF only a 6-finger webtoe byte-dweezle got time to scr*w around with Plebian ... and for what? Sound. It's a solved problem, pad're. See A.G. Bell for details. Turns out it's not really all that hard when sound is the ONLY agenda. Eh, pad're?
I'm also evaluating getting a better audio card, but I've had trouble finding decent documentation, even on the boxes - sure, everything does eight-dimensional 12-in-1 audio output, but what's I'm more interested in is the quality of the A/D converter, so when I input sound from analog media (my old vinyl disks and analog tapes) it doesn't lose more than necessary. Are there chipsets to avoid, or to hunt around for?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters."
B-)
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
Why not just make it work. If it needs a howto, then it is broken. I work with computers all day long and when I want to use my computer at home, I just want it to work. I do not care what it uses or how it works, I just want it to work automagically.
Does't every admin deserve this? We spend all day making things automagically work for everyone else, but when we go home and want tot listen to some music, we have to read a frickin how in order to do it. For the sake of all the Admins out there, can soemone make soemthing work automagically for us.
Actually I believe the WinME manual is more properly titled "Don't RTFM, we took care of everything for you so you don't have to exercise that little thing you call a brain...oh, and sorry if your card isn't on our list"
A direction I sincerly hope linux doesn't go.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
When Linux newbies have a lack of HOWTOs and sound support is diffuclt to implement, at best they are going to fool around with Linux for a day or two and then go back to their MP3 collection under Windows Yeah, I know what you are talking about. I decided last month to try to go to Linux, so with the help of my local bearded Linux guru, I installed Debian. After it was up and running I was thinking to myself "Whoah, this is cool. So far, I like it better than XP." The GUI was simple and easy, and I customize what I wanted. Best of all, it was free from Microsoft and their corporate monopoly. A few hours in, I ran XMMS, hoping to "rokk" out to my hours of music. I was hosting a party later that night also, and I was planning on using my linux computer + klipsch speakers to play all the music for the party, knowing my computer was dependable. Well, an hour before the party, I tried to test out some music......nothing. No sound. I said, "No sweat, I'll just get the linux guru." Well, that didn't help. After recompiling the kernel a few times, we STILL had no sound. By this time, people for the party had started to arrive at my house. Well, let me tell you, a party with out "bumping" music is TERRIBLE. Everyone was bored to death. It was the quietest party ever, and probably one of the few without music. I was made fun of for a few weeks, and lost plenty of respect, but now I'm please to have reinstalled Windows Xp and have music working again. Well, what I'm really trying to say is that if we had had that HOWTO guide, everything would have worked out fine. I would still be respected by most of my friends, and I'd still be enjoying linux.
--- YEAH I SAW SPARKS FLY!! FROM THE CORNER OF MY EEEYYYEEE!!!
Have you ever taken a dump and it's like, pellets? It's lots of round turds instead of the one big stinky I'm used to seeing.
Has this got something to do with my diet? Should I be worried?
Thanks in advance for your replies.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
What's wrong with that approach? You're installing a prepackaged software. No magic. You're not being creative. If it takes lots of time or reading to make it work, it should be improved.
And, of course, if your card is not supported by Linux, what are you going to do that is different from Windows, where you'd have to wait for a driver, unless you are a hardware guru?
Slashdot has perfected the Endless Shark Jump.
reality timed out @ 11:11
The really smart people use systems where they do not have to read a manual on how to make sound work on a PC.
This is 2002 and computers have had native support for sound which works without having to read a manual since 1979.
All this story does is point out that Linux is still not ready for the desktops of the world.
Perhaps after you have done your 100th Linux install, you will find that all this tweaking, man pages, compiling kernels and howtos and crap for basic PC operation is an annoyance.
Doing things the hard way is stupid and that is why people choose Windows.
What's wrong with that approach? Let's see:
You don't learn anything. Learning new things is important to me, if not to anyone else.
Automagically detecting hardware is not an exact science. If all you use is a tool to do something, then you can't fix it if said tool breaks.
Lots of time to read is relative. In the time it takes to read the HOWTO, you could have read the documentation that comes with ALSA and walked away with far more knowledge. You have to learn how to do anything, that's just a fact.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
Sounds interesting... Probably worth a download. Will try it on my next box. Even if only to see their version of init scripts and the package manager people always mention. :-)
What do you learn by trying to configure and install a piece of software by following a HOWTO? Other than the location and format of config files, which I doubt is a valuable knowledge?
;-)
I don't know. You could use this time to learn something that is actually useful. Like an interesting programming language, or some theory, or something not related to computers at all. I don't like the face the software FORCES me to use my time to learn its configuration, as opposed to saving me time I could use on what I want. Unless you're a mindless drone who, if not given a configuration problem, just reads Slashdot and chats on ICQ...
Last time I checked, you could override drivers on Windows.
>Doing things the hard way is stupid and that is why people choose Windows.
That's fine. Enjoy Windows. Let me know what your mp3s sound like when DRM takes away your ability to play them. Maybe then you'll read some documentation.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
I know why this ended up on the main page Because the moderator that posted it must own the website it's on - just try clicking on "Gonzoolinux" or his name way up above and look where it takes you! :).
- Make sure you have a 2.5.x kernel or above.
- Select your card from a dropdown.
- Retrieve, unpack, and compile source code.
- Install resulting software with a strange command-line utility.
- Retrieve, unpack, and install even more software.
- Edit a configuration file.
- Edit another configuration file.
- Run a script.
- Start a daemon.
Wow. That's so easy! I can see why OS X is the number one selling Unix:
- Go to System Preferences.
- Select "Sound".
- Select "Output".
- Select your high-end audio card.
- Select "Input".
- Select your high-end audio card.
Let's assume that your time is worth $50/hr. After a few hours of struggling to set up sound under Linux, that extra cash for Apple hardware doesn't sound so bad...
My C=64 had sound that just worked, so did my Atari ST, Amiga 2000, Atari Falcon, windows 98, win 2k, win xp, Mandrake, and Red Hat. If any OS requires a HowTo to make basic things like pc sound work, then that distro is broken.
Nobody is going to impress anyone because they got sound working on their debian box, scrap the howto and get the sound working without user intervention.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
NOW look at all those Windows people giggling and pointing their fingers at us!
(Remember the airplane joke, what the linux people did...)
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
It has ALSA built in.
Compiling your own kernel additions is for experimental stuff, not stuff that has been working for years like ALSA
So I was making paper on computer when suddenly Slashdot posted on their front page that a HOWTO for some distro had been released. And I was like...
Huh?
The fact that your OS requires an entire HOWTO, in order to get sound working, is a dead giveaway to the fact that it ISN'T INTENDED, and NEVER WAS INTENDED, to run on the desktop. The Lunix zealots who think that Grandma Bessie will read the FUCKING ALSA HOWTO so she can play her Public Enemy MP3's are smoking some good stuff, and I WANT SOME OF IT!
No, then I'll either go back to my Macintosh (whether it be a new one or an old 8100), or wait for someone to put together a Linux distro that I don't have to fiddle with for days to get it to work. The view point "everyone wants an easy-to-use computer" is just as wrong as the "everyone should do it the hard way" - there's always that pesky group in between...
mrg
Worst. Article. Ever [*].
[*] Evaluated data covers last three days worth of articles.
I'm sure alsa does lots of cool things, but I never got past the fact that with the oss drivers, I could:
:) WTFIUWT?
$ modprobe es1370
and away I went.
With ALSA, I could load 15 or twenty drivers, and even if I managed to pick all the right ones, the damn things were muted by default!
So.. maybe a howto is a good thing. But why is it so damn complex that it requires a howto?
If your distro picks up, configures and sets your sound up without ALSA then you do NOT have to do this. You can and ogle for playing DVDs requires it but personally on my maestro3 card the sound from the OSS driver is better IMO compared to ALSA.
_ __
In ALSA it sounds sort of tinny and strained, it seems like the plain-jane maestro3 as opposed to the ALSA snd-maestro3 works better at least on my laptop.
I never seem to have trouble with my sound till I start mucking with it by hand. If I accept the distro defaults I am usually better off. This is a good thing for distros by the way. However, this is the exact opposite in terms of XF86Config. It seems like I always find two or three things to tweak manually that the distro-makers miss.
Oh well...
_______________________________________________
ACK
Seriously, this is not News for Nerds in any way. It's information, sure. Maybe it's a tutorial. But what the hell is news about this?!
Take a decent distro like Debian with crappy audio support (compared to most distros) and write an article on how to install and configging something that should be there anyways?! Not news.
I'm hoping next week brings us exciting news like:
Installing/Configuring Linksys Etherfast PCMPC200 PCMCIA drivers in SuSE
Debian is for pussies.
While you're waiting for someone else to put together a distro so that you don't have to think or digging out the old computer which may or may not play new formats or switching to a platform which takes not having to learn to all new heights, I'll be listening to mp3s. Amazing the lengths people will go to to not have to think/learn.
By the way, I am not a "everyone should do it the hard way" but I am cognizant of the benefits reaped from actually reading documentation and being able to learn. Just to add, the HOWTO has nothing that isn't in the ALSA docs. I am not against HOWTOs, I am against HOWTOs that are distro specific and contain no new or helpful information.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
I can't see how this is newsworthy, it's already in your /usr/share/doc/alsa-source/README.Debian.gz. And they use the far simpler make-kpkg instead of building manually with lengthy vars to define that nobody remembers. ;-)
Ok, the big news was indeed: use apt-get install alsa-source and read the manual to get alsa to work on Debian
have you been defaced today?
Absolutely. You want to be looking at soundcards like the M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 (what I use), or Terraenc's cards. Others like ones from Digital Audio Labs (DAL), or Echo. None of these names are common, but the chipset in common is the Envy24 chipset: easily one of the best out there in terms of S/N ratio, etc.
I would recommend checking out www.pcavtech.com for actual *real* measurements -- you can see how much of the SoundBlasters are merely marketing hype, and how much is real performance.
As for ALSA support: Midiman/M-Audio's soundcards are all well-supported. I haven't any clue about the others: theoretically, if the chipset is the same or very similar, there should be no complaints, but I wouldn't count on anything...
Since most people only want sound hardware for output, this is probably enough.
If you are looking to migrate away from Cakewalk, Cubase, or Logic to a Linux solution, it's still a pipe dream. Sure there are a million audio projects, but the cubase killer is just not out there, not in the pipeline, and I don't even imagine it's in the cards.
A linux version of Fruityloops would be awesome, and if it were able to host VST applications, it would be of significant value to me.
One other point; I'd like to see a howto that deals specifically with the 2.5 kernel and debian.
The article is clear and concise, and it stops short of telling you how to, say, do multitrack recording, enabling 24/96 recording and mixing, or how to enable hardware synths. It also doesn't give any card specific help (Ice1712 M-Audio cards, anyone?) This is really just a special case of "installing modules" which is documented pretty well, elsewhere.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I have a sound blaster live, and RH 7.3 found it and properly set it up. I am not using ALSA, just the standard driver, but it provides the same functionality as my windows sound card, and I didn't have to RTFM, I just had to PITC (Put in the CD).
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
What would you do if it didn't?
Perhaps after you have done your 100th Linux install, you will find that all this tweaking, man pages, compiling kernels and howtos and crap for basic PC operation is an annoyance.
/. article.
i've installed linux many times on a lot of different machines (generally for friends and friends of friends ever since high school), and have very rarely needed to do any major tweaking just to get things to work. perhaps with obscure hardware sound would be difficult, but at this point major distros seem to get it right. i dont think anyone using those really is forced to read and configure if they dont want to.
when i first put linux on my laptop (back in 1999), i had to read and tweak for an hour or two to get sound to work on the stupid neomagic sound/video card, but once it worked it actually sounded better than it had on win98 (which came with the machine), mostly because the driver for windows had some serious problems. that's when i started to appreciate linux, because with windows there was nothing i could do to fix sound, and after that the amount of work to configure linux seemed trivial.
before claiming that linux isnt ready for the desktop, maybe you should look into it more so you can at least base your decision on personal experience and not on your impression of some
I am against HOWTOs that are distro specific and contain no new or helpful information.
i think i understand your viewpoint; it would certainly be difficult to wade through the list of HOWTOs if there were many superfluous ones. but just because there is little unique information does not mean they are useless. a good HOWTO is likely to be better organized and a gentler and quicker introduction than the full documentation.
i agree that it's better not to have distro-specific documentation, but i'd rather that mean authors try writing documentation that is helpful for all distros, rather than simply not writing about something because it's distro-specific. there are many people using each distro, and there should be useful documentation for them, whether it's helpful to the entire community or just part of it.
what would you do if windows didnt understand your sound card?
Score +1 informative!
Automatically detecting hardware IS an exact science. There is a PnP standard and all modern bioses support it. Why create another layer of complexity. The bios will report exactly what hardware you have to the OS. Then it is a matter of checking for a driver. If there is no driver for the specific PnP ID of a device, then check for the generic PnP ID of the device and install that driver.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
Reading documentation? I work with computers all day long, the last thign I want to waste my time with is reading a howto to find where to add the extra line to a config file to make a sound card work. That shit is tolerable when it comes to configuring a server, but a sound is not critical to a server. It is critical to a multimedia home computer and most IT professionals do not want to have to fiddle with their hoem computer just to make it work. It is a total waste of time.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
Have you taken a moment to think that the location of the configuration files is not learning. It is a waste of time. If you want to learn how computer soundcards work, pick up a book on programming and program the soundcard.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
Get a better sound card.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
I have been using Linux for at least 4 years. Mandrake 9 is getting close, but it still isn't ready for primetime.
If you fully read my post, you would have noticed that my opinion was based on over 100 installs of various linxes and not some stupid slashdot story or slashdot post.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
The best way to fix also is to recompile the
kernel without sound and install OSS Sound.
This ends the random crashes of the machine
if you have an onboard sound card.
I don't know if it'll please a finale power-user, ... or some of the other stuff listed
but linux users who need notation apps might
check out http://www.all-day-breakfast.com/rosegarden/
at http://sound.condorow.net/notation.html
Ah yes, PnP will solve everything.
Sure works great on Windows. Never had any problems with it there.
I purchased the commercial OSS drivers about two years ago (maybe less, i don't remember) and believe that they are all around better than the alsa drivers. Don't get me wrong, the alsa drivers are great, but they don't seem to give me the same edge over fine tuning my sound as OSS. Also, i figure that for $30 bucks, those damned drivers had better be superior to ALSA (free as in speech/beer) in every respect. The installation is far superior to anything alsa has to offer. Unzip the tarball, run 'oss-install' and point-n-click your way to sound. I still feel as though I made the right decision. I have a feeling, however, that soon, i will regret purchasing them. (of course, at the time i purchased them, they were pretty much the only decent set of sound drivers available).
And after you've done your 1000th windows install to fix some silly software problem you will see that to use any tool you have to understand how it works.
I spent two years as senior technician in the service department at a major computer retailer. 95% of the problems I saw were caused by windows' inability to protect itsself from itsself. When your system is configured by a honking big binary file (the registry) that must be parsed correctly for the system to start, and then allow any software on the system to write to it, you're asking for trouble.
With Linux you generally don't need to know much more than the average windows user to install and use the system. However when you have a problem you can RTFM and generally fix it. By having many small text files for configuration it's much more difficult to break your system in a way that requires reinstallation rather than repair.
I have heard that windows has gotten more stable, (the last versions I dealt with were 98SE and NT4) but as long as the configuration is based on the registry you can keep it.
Many of you may be wondering, why ALSA made front page news. There are several reasons:
1. ALSA sound drivers are nearly impossible to install.
2. If you want to turn your Linux box into a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) ala TiVo, then you need the alsa drivers and the stuff from the GATOS project.
(See) http://gatos.sourceforge.net/overview.php
I am glad that someone posted the HOW-TO... Alsa has been a big thorn in my side for awhile now. Maybe now I can get the ALSA-Mixer working properly.
Good Luck, and may your all Linux boxes be PVR's!
...or else that guy is extremely dull.
That troll exaggerated the difficulty of installing ALSA on DEBIAN, misrepresenting it as enabling sound on Linux in general. Then he oversimplified OS X. So he is either a flamebait (half-truths and lies, like a politician) or a really dumbass.
Isn't Apple going to release OS X for x86? Well, wait till that happens, then ask that troll/dumbass to run OS X on X86. And I can tell you what is going to happen--he'll have to buy his hardware according to an "approved HW list" published by Apple, and you can bet there are going to be an amazing choice of 3 motherboards and 4 soundcards on that list.
There is nothing insightful or interesting about that post.
Cheers,
e.
Not really, but thanks for the pointer. Generally, good sequencers don't make good music typesetters in much the same way that vim or emacs doesn't make a good LaTeX.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Maybe it is just me, but there seems to be a concerted effort of late to promote Debian on Slashdot. I am not complaining, I love Deb, it just seems that the activist in Taco is showing lately. Anyone else notice this?
Hello Folks,
While wound in general working perfect I can't record from the mic. I can even hear my self from the mic (high mic volume and I hear my own voice in the speakers).
But when I try to capture it's just silence (yes I have set the capture device). I'm running Suse 8.0. Helpfull for any suggestions my mail is olaf_sc @ yahoo.com
Cheers
this sooo sums up debian's lack of focus for me. i would like to love debian, but it is a distro for experienced linux users that makes just enough of an attempt to attract newbies that it pisses off it's target audience. debian is too hard for normal people to run and a pain in the ass to those of us who ran linux pre '97. pick one or the other, but middle of the fence just sucks.
/etc/modules.conf, reboot. where did the changes go? oh, sorry debian rebuilds that file.
example - package foo is split into foo, foo-dev, libfoo, and libunrelated1, 2 and 3.
another - edit
please... i know how to make my goddamn soundcard work! now stop writing scripts that overwrite my config and concentrate on bringing the packages in unstable up to date!
gnome2? kde3? don't like the desktops but i like the apps from both! where are they?
I'm filing this one under "Unintentional irony." Thanks!
how to invest, a novice's guide
If you've got the right analog equipment, an SB Live! Platinum is actually rather good for what you're after.
The Live! is very well supported in Linux as far as my experience goes, and its analog inputs are pretty good. I don't have any hard figures, but going from my old vinyl to 192kbit MP3 (through LAME) compares *very* favorably to going from CD to same quality MP3 (Perl Jam - Vitalogy on vinyl and CD)
Also, the original Live! Platinum is available for around US$50 if you shop around.
(of course, all this is useless if you're looking for archive quality recording, but moving from your 'El-Cheapo Pretends-To-Be-Soundblaster-Compatible' it'd be an order of magnitde better)
...when you can use a Windows machine. Damned if I am going to go to all that trouble just for a bloody sound card. Plug and play is the way to go.
Btw I do use Linux as well. Stick to Windows if you want multimedia.
try the delta audio series by M-audio.
I use them under win for making tracks very good quality/price ratio.
also have it working under linux but havent done much with it as i c cant find a cubae/logic/protools type program for linux yet
Yep you nailed it: ... easy way is best unless the "hard way" provides a major payback. Linux sound does NOT provide that payback, or you may tell me how ... while WinX/Apple transparantly provide the sound function tool -- 'course as always the Lusr is responsible for the productive/creative use of any tool.
BTW: My own "creative" website uses sound as an integral part of original fiction presentations.
If you're really quite serious about A/D quality, look into using an external box for the task. Midiman makes a couple of different, well-performing 24-bit models, and they occasionally pop up on Ebay. Or, you could pick up a nice pawnshop/Ebay DAT or Minidisc deck, and use that.
Not that you need 24 bits to transcribe vinyl, but it does help ensure that you'll not run out of headroom. Later in the process, you can normalize the audio and truncate or dither it down to 16, while preserving every nuance of the album's pops, ticks, and surface hiss.
Plug a box like this into a sound card's SP/DIF input. The stupider, cheaper, more DSP-phobic cards will generally be more likely to do a bit-perfect job of this, such as the $12 Zoltrix Nighingale or other CMI8738-based cards. Along the same lines, do try to avoid anything branded Creative Labs, mmkay? They've got bad habits like irrevocable resampling, and are noisy throughout (even when only doing strictly "digital" things with SP/DIF IO).
That said:
I used to play engineer for a streamed talk radio show. Equipment was limited to the gear in a small project recording studio, none of which was intended for broadcast use, aside from the scrap-built Linux box running liveice and lame.
Since this box needed a sound card, I drove over to the nearest white-box OEM parts dealer and started looking. I picked a YMF744-based (XG) PCI card from AOpen, similar to this one, based primarily on the component count: It was the only card under $50 which was not branded Creative, and appeared to have reasonable analog filter stages and signal paths.
It turns out that this card, along with other Yamaha XG cards, has superb support under ALSA, and that the quality of the converters is not bad.
The control of the card was such that I was able to calibrate it to the output meters on the Tascam console, and monitor the program via digital loopback through its own DAC at 0 gain.
I could then push a button on the console, and switch between monitoring the signal in its original analog state, or after it'd been through a ADC->DAC stage without worrying that varying levels would skew my perception.
In the (somewhat noisy) enviroment I was in, I could hear no difference in overall quality with or without the Aopen card in-line. This cheap sound card was, in a word, transparent, at least for my purposes. Which is all I can ask of any sound card.
ALSA made this easy, but I suspect I'd have trouble doing things so precisely under other operating systems.
But I've noticed that not all XG-based cards are made the same. Hoontech sells, or at least sold a year or two ago, some expensive studio-oriented monstrosities which doubtless sound beautiful. On the other end of things, I've heard some laptops with XG chips which sounded horrible.
Lately, I've been recording my 2-year-old daughter's various noises with an SB Live 5.1. The results are OK, but nothing like what I remember hearing in the studio. I could blame the card's on-board mic preamp or the sound of my apartment, but I fear that shoddy AD plays at least as large a role in the matter.
Good luck.
Kid-proof tablet..
I don't want to troll but the Debian community asked the Linux Documentation Project to move the HOWTO's over to the GNU Free Documentation License, ./ article, yet from looking at the Linux Orbit article it appears that the MIDI-HOWTO cannot include any of it's work as there are no indications that this text is opensource.
ALSA, and Linux audio development in general, is making HUGE progress.
Yes, things are still in development, ALSA 0.9 in 2.5 kernel is not meant for wide-scale use, but there are a significant number of very happy Debian users out there and once everything goes stable Linux will be the same ass kicking platform for audio as it is for servers.
The MIDI-HOWTO covers ALSA installation and whilst earlier version were more difficult to install, support for soundcards improves every day making it easier every release.
Phil
For those interested in setting up alsa, note that the modules options file in the article is only valid for alsa 0.9 up to rc3
/etc/modules.conf files by hand or use our alsa-driver/utils/module-options script which does this job. Please, notice that 'snd_' prefix is not equal to 'snd-' prefix (module name) which is left unchanged.
The line
options snd snd_major=116 snd_cards_limit=4 snd_device_mode=0660 snd_device_gid=29 snd_device_uid=0
wont work with newer versions (for instance Sid has 0.9rc5, an so I guess Testing will have it soon too), because (from www.alsa-project.org)
We have changed the kernel module symbol names (module parameter names). We removed prefix 'snd_'. Please, update your
That means you need to change the previous line into something like:
options snd major=116 cards_limit=4 device_mode=0660 device_gid=29 device_uid=0
Hope this helps
!
^_^
Kalin
Metamuscle.com - News in the Iro
When I installed Redhat 5.2 four years ago, sound was working right from the beginning.
/etc/conf.modules. Everything will work immediately, if you change mixer settings they will be automatically saved, etc.
With OSS drivers you only need to add "alias sound module_name" line in the
Now four years later with ALSA you need:
-download and install two different packages
-create config file with 20 lines
-unmute mixer with obscure app
-use external script to save mixer settings
Can someone explain to me how ALSA is better than Coreaudio?
Why are people even bothering with this stuff when you can get a UNIX with all the relevant stuff built in and one that runs Logic, Cubase SX and soon ProTools?
Linux should be consigned to the server racks where it belongs, anyone trying to use multimedia on it is simply wasting their life IMO.
Why does linux make everything so damn hard. I use linux, but only because I believe in free software and right now its the only real provider capable of doing what I want to do. But it is so outdated it just bugs me. Somebody needs to take these suggestions, and actually think for a second about how much better linux would be if they were just implemented (also I have running about 4 linux desktops and 2 linux servers, so I'm not a super mega linux geek, correct me if I have an off point here):
1) Why does everything have to be compiled into the kernel. What? Can the kernel not map shared objects into its memory space? And if it can't, why not?
2) Why don't they establish only standard APIs that device drivers have to implement (seperate of the kernel and not built into some stupid x-windowing system or something irrelevant to what it does example: sound drivers for KDE), i.e.:
OpenGL - graphics library
OpenAL - audio library
insert appropriate nic standard
insert appropriate printer standard, etc. and make the stupid x-windowing system just another interface that runs on top of OpenGL, jeez.
3) The everything is a file mechanism is really getting outdated. Why are there not object oriented shells yet? Come on, just pop a javascript shell in there, make ObjectInstantiators/ObjectSerializers that detect file types and convert to the appropriate object instance, so javascript can instantiate it, use it, serialize it back to disk, and then move on.
4) Why do we still use program based architectures? Programs are way too linear. We need objects and an object handling mechanism (like javascript or something similar to it, like a Delphi UI or something) not programs. Once you make a program things get hard coded in that make it too specialized to be used in anything other than what it is designed for, if everything was just an interactive object, you could chain them together and do all sorts of neat tricks, that you could never dream of with standard file based shells/programs. And then you could serialize these object webs you create to disk for use as kind of a template(I'd say program but you could easily modify these to fit your needs). Sounds way better than standard file based scripts to me. Although javascript scripts sound nice too.
5) If we are going to be using a program/file based OS, lets make the program names intelligible. Lets see: vi, emacs, joe (joe??? what the hell man), yast, lilo, initrd, sh, etc., etc.. Come on guys name your programs something intelligible, and leave the credits in the fscking readme file. At least if dos had something it had convenient keywords (copy, rename, delete, deltree, EDIT). I realize I could make symlinks to my hearts delight, but that is only assuming you know what the program your looking for is called.
6) Why did anybody think it would be a good idea to integrate the inetd with the x-windowing system (xinetd). Yippee, all the speed of NT servers on a linux system. Of course thats assuming you use inetd to begin with.
7) This one is for the distros: quit using the damn graphical installers. Graphical installers don't make installing any faster (quite to the contrary in a lot of cases), and in installing on older hardware a lot of times it makes it nearly impossible. I'm all for straightforward installers, but you don't have to be in a graphics mode to do it (fine standard VGA modes will work)
8) Hey I got a fun idea, lets put all those binaries in one directory, with no real index as to what each of these programs with obfuscated names do, and then lets give no easy way to find out what it does short of running it. Woo! And don't say, "One word, man" or "info" those systems are pretty fucked up as it is.
9) Standardize the damn locations, follow the LSB biatches.
10) This may sound contradictory to the above, but... abolish the Unix file system layout. I can't stress enough how a simple object persistence/serialization mechanism would be way better than a file system any day. Anyways, those are just my rants/suggestions as to what needs to be changed or layered on top of the linux filesystem if they wanted it to actually be a BETTER OS than windows or MacOS.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
It's because Debian is preferred by the editors, silly.
And since when did Debian alone revolutionize the way people think about closed vs. open source? Did I miss a meeting?
Don't be a fanatic, please.
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
as far as kde in debian goes:
Unless you want the latest just to have the latest, kde2.2 is pretty good. Beleive it or
not Linux is getting to the point where the current version of appX is good enough. ( or pretty darn close)
Kde 3.x are waiting on a bottle neck to switch
Debian over to gcc 3.2. If it wasn't for that
it would be in testing by now.
However if you want KDE 3.x there are debs
see the link below for all you want to know
about kde and debian..
http://mypage.bluewin.ch/kde3-debian/
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