Docs/Hardware/Sound

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Hardware: Sound Compatibility

Contents

[edit] Alsa Sound Drivers

If your system hangs at the "Restoring mixer settings" prompt when booting after a new install then reboot choose 'failsafe' and enter the root password. Then follow derek's procedure below

From Mandriva Linux 9.2 the ALSA sound drivers are the default driver for most sound cards. (They all begin with 'snd-' )The Mandriva installer does not fully configure the alsa sound modules. To get your alsa driver modules fully configured install the alsa-utils and newt packages from your CDs and then in a root terminal run 'alsaconf'. Alsaconf will write your sound module configuration to the file /etc/modules.conf, but beware alsaconf will erase the previous contents of /etc/modules.conf which also contains driver module info for your other hardware. Make a backup file first and replace all of the lines regarding non sound devices after you have run alsaconf. Information on your sound card configuration may be found at ALSA

To see what needs to be added type at the # "diff /etc/modules.conf /etc/modules.what_ever_name_you_saved_it_to_goes_here" without the " everything that is after each < is what is unique to the new modules.conf file and whatever is after the > is what is unique to the old. [please correct this if I'm saying it wrong]

If you don't have an editor installed that you understand how to use [ pico & nano is NOT installed included in the download ISO's ] then first make sure you have net access by typing "route" at the command prompt. If you see anything other then 127.0.0.1 you are propably fine. Type "Lynx http://www.nano-editor.org/download.html" and download the nano tarball. Then type "gunzip -dc nano_filename_goes_here | tar xvf -" This will create a directory for nano. Now type "cd nano" followed by the tab and then enter keys. Then do each of the following.

# ./configure && make && make check

then if all is ok

make install

This installs nano into your system. Now you simply type "nano /etc/modules.conf" to edit the file. There is some help built in and more documentation online at http://www.nano-editor.org/docs.html

If you are running KDE and are using the Alsa sound drivers you may experience crackling/hiss in your sound. Open KDE Control Centre> Sound>Sound System>Sound I/O and change the Sound I/O method from 'Auto select' to 'Advanced Linux Sound Architecture' -- DerekJennings 29 Dec '03

[edit] Creative

[edit] Audigy Platinum

Card works fine under both %090% and %091%. Front panel support needs emu10-k1 tools. Under %100% and %101% I was not able to get front panel support at all, although surround sound is fine. Having tried both alsa and OSS I had to abandon the effort. Another solution:

9.1: Whilst using Mandrake 9.1 I was able to use my Audigy Platinum front panel access, with OSS drivers and emu10k1-tools.

10.0, 10.1: Under 10.x the Audigy front panel no longer worked, either with ALSA or OSS drivers, and I had to look for another solution. I found the NewLink 5.25" bay which directs existing ports to the front of your box. It can handle

  • Audio - Headphones, Microphone, Line-In
  • USB2 - 3 ports
  • IEEE1394 - 2 port repeater
  • Card Reader - 6 in 1
  • It can also supply 12v and 5v power to the front panel.

No drivers are required

[edit] C-Media 8738

  • The onboard solution on my KT-400 board. Sounds great The driver name is snd-cmipci. ALSA Page

[edit] ESS

  • ES1868, ES1869, ES1879, ES1887, ES1888 : The following comments apply strictly to the ES1887, but are more than likely to work with the other types too, because these are by and large the same cards.
  • This ISA card is normally not recognized when installing Mandriva Linux. But no worry. Run sndconfig. If this is not installed on your system, install from sndconfig-0.68-1mdk.i586.rpm (both for MD 9.0 and for MD 9.1). sndconfig should be run as root (open a console, type su and enter the root password, type sndconfig and press enter). The program will not recognize the soundcard, but the ESS can then be selected. Don`t worry if the type is different from yours: it should work with all of the above. From there you can choose the settings for dma channel, i/o, irq etc. The default settings from the manufacturer may work, which are: port=220, irq=7, dma=1, mpu_channel=320. If you used the card in another operating system try the settings you used there, but they will not necessarily be the same. After selecting the values choose `OK` and listen to the sound sample. If no sound is heard (make sure the volume is turned up!), try other settings in the previous menu by TABbing to the number and selecting a different one by UP or DOWN. Try it, it works :-)

[edit] Guillemot

[edit] Fortissimo II (Crystal chipset)

  • With Alsa configured correctly (See instructions on Alsa site) will work from optical out.

[edit] Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (Cirrus Logix 4630 chipset)

  • Sound is excellent and it works well but some of the advanced features of the card are unavailable using ALSA. The name of the driver is snd-cs46xx. ALSA Page

[edit] NForce 2 driver

  • This is NForce 2 sound driver website from Nvidia. Someone asked on Mandriva newbie list about problems with NForce 2 sound a few days ago and Anne Wilson asks me to post it here. The driver can be obtained from http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_nforce_1.0-0292.

[edit] Terratec

[edit] Aurion Space 7.1

[edit] VIA

  • On board embedded VIA686B AC97. Works great for my needs.
  • On board embedded VIA8235 AC97 works perfectly under 10.1. 5.1 chan output possible with correct speakers.

[edit] Sound in Games (EnemyTerritory Quake)

  • If you are using the Alsa driver and find sound does not work in Enemy Territory/Quake then add a command like this to the end of your /etc/rc.local file: 
    echo "et.x86 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss
    See http://www.alsa-project.org/~iwai/OSS-Emulation.html

[edit] USB Audio Devices

Many people are starting to use usb audio devices to improve the sound quality by doing the digital-to-analog conversion outside of the comuter case, where there is theoretically less noise and interference to impede the signal quaility. Many of these devices work fine with the snd-usb-audio driver, and Mandriva Linux will automatically detect the device when you boot and set it up as the default sound device. if you are using one of these devices for higher quality and not as a general purpose sound card, you may not want this device to be yur primary sound device, so as to avoid playing all the system sounds through your stereo system.

[edit] Sound-Related Tips

[edit] Alsa Drivers 0.9.4 on MDK 9.1

From Jeorg Mertin:

you can download the new alsa 0.9.4 drivers if you want. Just make sure - during compile time you disable the verbose-printk with

./configure --disable-verbose-printk

if not - you'll get failed dependencies on snd.o which makes the entire soundsystem unusable.

(Note - This is no longer required as of Alsa Drivers 1.0.2, maybe earlier)

-- JamesSparenberg - 15 Jun 2003

[edit] Playing MIDI files when your onboard sound doesn't have a MIDI device

From the Larry Short article at

http://www.mandrakeclub.com/article.php?sid=979&mode=nocomments

[edit] MIDI emulation

This method plays MIDI files in software, and so is not dependent on the Soundblaster hardware and doesn't care which driver you use. In my experience, it plays some midi's quite well, especially with the larger soundfonts, but overall it does not play most midi's as well as Way One.

NOTE (Deno): Emulation is not only less pleasant to your ears, but also requires more CPU time than native MIDI. This may not be a problem for those of you with modern machines, but severely limits the usability of MIDI emulation on old machines)

Step 1. Fix aRts

Unlike Way One, this method uses the aRts Sound Server in KDE and therefore must run under KDE. It uses the program KMidi--with an i on the end. The first problem I encountered is that the aRts sound server in KDE wants to run with real time priority, but was not. Until I fixed that, Kmidi kept telling me how many notes had been butchered, as if I couldn't hear the problem.

The way to test whether this applies to your system is to open the aRTs Control Tool under Multimedia: Sound and then View: aRts Status. I opened a terminal, stepped up to root, and then ran xftree to navigate to /usr/bin/artswrapper to examine the Properties (with a right-click). I simply checked the Set UID box on the Permissions tab. Your file manager might not have the right-click shortcut, but the principle is the same: Set UID. Perhaps the editor would be so kind as to provide the syntax for doing the same thing more simply from a terminal.

Sure. chmod 4755 /usr/bin/kmidi will do the trick. Beware, this means that kmidi will run as root, which obviously lowers the security of your system. chmod 4750 /usr/bin/kmidi; chgrp audio /usr/bin/kmidi may be a bit better solution - this way the access to kmidi is limited to users belonging to audio group.

Once it's done, aRts is much happier, and since Kmidi depends on Timidity and Timidity depends on aRts the midi's will now play uninterrupted. If all midis were piano, bass, and guitar, we could stop right here, because the default instruments are limited to those three. On he other hand, on solo piano music, the default setup sounds pretty good.

[edit] Recording sound from Line-In

  • My aim was to record from my vinyl LPs so that I could transfer them to CD. My soundcard is an Audigy Platinum, which has front panel inputs. I changed from the audigy driver to the emu10k1 driver, and found that I could then get the emu10k1-tools package to appear on my mixers. However, to this point I did not know whether they worked.
  • I did find that I was getting severe interference noise patterns, and had to change some settings in aumix. Pcm and IGain are the sliders that must be adjusted until the sound is right. Then Line or Line1, depending on your input. needs to be set to red.
  • There is an excellent tutorial at http://desktoplinux.com/articles/AT8018846552.html, called The Mandrake Audio Workstation HowTo. Some of the applications it advises you to load do not work with the stock 9.1 kernel, but need the MM kernel.
  • The key to getting the recording to work is to gain control over aRts. This is done by installing kickarts, then adding an applet to the kde kicker. ARts must be disabled before the recording begins.
  • With aRts disabled, Audacity records without problems, even from the front panel.
  • The home page for the Linux Audio Users' Group is at http://www.djcj.org/LAU/guide/index.php and there is a mailing list at http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/subscribelau.php3

[edit] Getting the ALSA dmix plugin running

The ALSA dmix plugin is a module that allows software mixing, so that you can be less dependent on soundservers like aRTS to mix inputs. The benefit of this is for example that you could have your amaroK output through gstreamer get mixed with the system notifications by arts, instead of having to use the arts in amaroK too. This is beneficial because the playback options with gstreamer are much better than with arts, and quite frankly, arts stinks. See SettingUpDmix for a detailed explanation of how to get it setup and working.

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