Oss4 seems allright!

Pennypacker · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2012 Posts: 6

Just wanted to express my happiness with oss4.

I tried installing it in the past, i could not get it to work then. (forgot what went wrong)
I gave it another try today..It all installed ok, via the overlay. Very good sound quality!
Until today, i had to switch to windows for best hifi sound. This is no longer the case.
Vlc, mplayer2, ffmpeg, audacious all working fine.
Using asus-ST card with sennh. hd600.

I guess there are still some compatibility-issues with some programs, but these don't seem to affect me much.

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7022

Pennypacker · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2012 Posts: 6

No, i did not try bsb2 with alsa, so i can't really say anything about it. I just read about it, the theory behind it seems plausible.
My experience however is, (& i have a lot of hours listening to headphones with different sound-cards) that no plug-in/effect etc. sounds good to me. Just stereo, with a little eq in windows (i find the bass too heavy/dominant without eq in windows with this op-amp/card/phone). With the hd595 the flat eq mode is just right for me.
No cross-feed, crystalizer, cms3d (on xfi, an awful effect for music, not games), Dolby headphone etc. I hate it all.
And it is not my goal to talk bad about alsa. I used it until now (& i will probably use it again if when "upgrading", oss4
doesn't seem to work again for some reason).

Alsa has always worked without trouble.

But: comparing to windows & oss4 it sounded: more flat, more dry, just more "dead".

khayyam · Veteran Joined: 07 Jun 2012 Posts: 1268

Pennypacker ...

I also have Sennheiser HD600 and generally don't like any kind of filtering, however I was impressed with bs2b, its somewhat of a subtle experience, and I now find stereo in headphones "distracting" (at least thats the only description I can come up with).

best ... khay

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7022

In the OSS4 configuration, did you specify headphones?

Maybe OSS4 automatically applies something bs2b-like?

Pennypacker · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2012 Posts: 6

Yes, maybe there is something like bs2b already included in the windows or oss4 drivers..

I just selected "headphone" in ossxmix "CMedia CMI8788" x-panel. There was no need for much configuration-file editing.
Looking at /usr/lib64/oss/etc/devices.list, i see that all xonar cards, except the ST, have an entry in there.
Guess i'm using the "stock" cmi8788 driver, which works fine.
Choosing between the 3 headphone-gain settings is not (yet?) possible, but i don't mind this.
The "field of sound" is a little different from windows..there seems to be a bit more bass, but not in a fatiguing way.

Still i would like to be able to turn the bass lower..

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7022

Is there a "normal speakers" output selection, that you can test? If it sounds "more dead" through headphones, then we have the answer

aCOSwt · Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 10:30 pm Post subject:

Is OSS4 MIDI capable ?
I left FreeBSD for my desktop a couple of years ago because FreeBSD was OSSonly and OSS was not MIDI capable.
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franzf · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 3:31 pm Post subject:

John R. Graham · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 3:58 pm Post subject:

Moved from Multimedia to Unsupported Software. I was reminded by one of the developers that Oss4 is not yet in the official tree, so this thread fits better here.

- John
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aCOSwt · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 4:23 pm Post subject:

disi · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 10:27 pm Post subject:

The ebuilds are really old in the overlay with oss-4.1.1052, current versions:
http://www.4front-tech.com/developer/sources/stable/gpl/
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tclover · Apprentice Joined: 10 Apr 2011 Posts: 295

I have newer ebuild in my overlay plus a live one (a failure to clone the mercurial repo is not an exception, syncing to it is already too much hassle). Anyway, 4.2.2006 is available.
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PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7022

Another way to improve the ALSA output seems to be to compile mpg123 with --enable-int-quality, as done in Arch. I notice that Gentoo doesn't have this option - someone wanna file a bug? (I'm not a Gentoo user.)

mpg123 is used by both mplayer and audacious, which the OP mentions.

Dorsai! · Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2012 11:47 am Post subject:

This got me thinking and now I filed a Bug in case someone wants to check:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=426578

Pennypacker · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2012 Posts: 6

I just upgraded to kernel 3.5 & audacious 3.3. (with, as before, oss-devel-9999)
Could i be imagining things?..but my opinion is, that music quality has improved again.
Quality is superb now, i think. (most stereo headphone listening).

Very good, Thank you devs! -)