Draksound
From Mandriva Community Wiki
Draksound is a tool of the Mandriva Control Center located in the Hardware section. It allows you to configure your sound card and to manage functionalities related to PulseAudio. It can be useful if you experience problems, sound issues or if you changed your sound card since the last installation of Mandriva Linux. This tool has been introduced in Mandriva 2008 Spring.
Interface
Here is the main interface of draksound :
You may have to resize the window or scroll down to see the Advanced button.
You can switch from one driver to another by selecting it from the Driver drop-down list. All the drivers compatible with your sound card are displayed: you have to choose between the OSS or the ALSA API.
OSS (Open Sound System) is the sound system Linux used before ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) was written.
We recommend that you use ALSA because OSS is a very basic and limited API. If your sound card is very old you may need to use OSS. On the other hand ALSA is a more elaborate and much richer API than OSS and provides many enhanced features.
Functionalities
You can configure other options for PulseAudio, the sound server. by checking the corresponding boxes.
- Enable PulseAudio
Activates the sound server. PulseAudio accepts sound input from many sources and mixes them together enabling sound output on the desktop. It is compatible with most audio sources. PulseAudio is the default sound server, it is recommended you leave it enabled.
GNOME users should also check this option as enabled. GNOME Desktop uses PulseAudio as default sound server (beginning with version 2.26) and only provides "Volume applet", which you can adjust volume level from panel applet, for PulseAudio sound server. Otherwise, volume applet will disappear from panel and you will not enable to adjust volume easily.
- Automatic routing from ALSA to Pulse Audio
There are still many programs (especially games) that use sound and are programmed to use the ALSA API instead of PulseAudio. It is recommended to leave this option checked so that these programs are able to output sound.
- Enable 5.1 sound with PulseAudio
Check this option if you have a multichannel audio system and want to take advantage of all its features.
- Enable user switching for audio applications
When a user logs in they monopolize the sound hardware: if another user logs in, their programs won't have any sound. If your machine hosts several users, check this option to enable sharing the sound hardware among logged in users. Even if a user is logged in and has locked the session, other users can login and have the sound available for their programs. It is recommended that you leave this option checked. You may uncheck it in specific cases when you want the first logged in user to have exclusive access to the sound hardware.
Click on Advanced to access more options. Here you can choose another driver, reset the sound options to their defaults or find a troubleshooting procedure.
Advanced options
You can access more advanced functionalities when you click on the Advanced button in the main window :
You can choose from any driver available on the system by clicking on Let me pick any driver. ALSA driver names starts with snd_.
The Reset sound mixer to default values does what the name suggests resets the volume etc to default level without displaying any message in return.
The Troubleshooting button displays a window with troubleshooting tips.
