ALSA and soundblaster live - troubles

platojones

I just installed ALSA on a newly installed 1.4rc1 vanilla kernel. After following the steps exactly in the documentation, I do in fact have sound. Sadly, there is definitely something amiss, because as soon as my sound kernel modules get loaded, I immediately hear static/hiss. Sound quality is so bad, I have to have messed something up somehow. The card is a basic OEM sound blaster live....machine is multiboot for XP, and FBSD...sound card works great, so it's not a HW problem. I get no errors at all loading the ALSA/OSS kernel modules, but here is some info. An lsmod shows this:

Module Size Used by Not tainted
snd-pcm-oss 37892 1 (autoclean)
snd-mixer-oss 11064 1 (autoclean) [snd-pcm-oss]
ehci-hcd 14792 0 (unused)
usb-ohci 17608 0 (unused)
uhci 26128 0 (unused)
hid 19652 0 (unused)
mousedev 4372 1
input 3648 0 [hid mousedev]
snd-emu10k1 68236 2
snd-rawmidi 13824 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-util-mem 1328 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-pcm 53376 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-emu10k1]
snd-timer 10920 0 [snd-pcm]
snd-hwdep 4384 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-seq-device 4284 0 [snd-emu10k1 snd-rawmidi]
snd-ac97-codec 27748 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd 27116 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-emu10k1 snd-rawmidi snd-util-mem snd-pcm snd-timer snd-hwdep snd-seq-device snd-ac97-codec]
soundcore 3940 6 [snd]
lvm-mod 58560 0 (unused)

If anybody has ALSA set up for a SBLIVE, does this look right? Second, in checking for DMA/IRQ conflcts, I noticed that there is *no* DMA channel set up for the sound card at all, i.e., cat /proc/dma:

4: cascade

And that's it! Doesn't seem right. Anybody had experience with this issue, I would certainly appreciate the help. Thanks

Rich

kim · n00b Joined: 01 Aug 2002 Posts: 11

My sound with ALSA and the SB-Live is very good. For you to compare i have the following modules loaded:
Note: soundcore is built into kernel.

sh-2.05a$ /sbin/lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
snd-pcm-oss 38148 0 (unused)
snd-mixer-oss 11896 0 [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-emu10k1 72524 0
snd-pcm 58240 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-emu10k1]
snd-timer 12744 0 [snd-pcm]
snd-rawmidi 15552 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-hwdep 4384 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-util-mem 1568 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-seq-device 4432 0 [snd-emu10k1 snd-rawmidi]
snd-ac97-codec 28164 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd 31084 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-emu10k1 snd-pcm snd-timer snd-rawmidi snd-hwdep snd-util-mem snd-seq-device snd-ac97-codec]
sh-2.05a$

I have seen other posts about people having noise and bad sound. I have a very old SB-Live that wouldn't work at all. Now I have a very new one and it sounds wonderful using alsa-driver. Makes me wonder if people who have bad sound have a different rev of the card than those it works for.

zen_guerrilla · Guru Joined: 18 Apr 2002 Posts: 343 Location: Greece

Run alsamixer and make sure that both "mic" & "mic boost" are muted. Also if you have an internal audio cable connecting your cd-rom to the sblive try muting also the "cd" on alsamixer or remove it. Some of these cables are not well grounded and make lots of noise...

.:: zen ::.

platojones · Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2002 3:03 pm Post subject:

Well, first i want to thank you both for your very helpful responses.

After compairing the modules loaded against kim's list it was obvious that things were set up correctly, so I went to alsamixer (again) and my muting each channel, found that the 'SBLIVE DIGITAL' channel was the source of my troubles. Thanks zen_guerilla for the tip. Gotta luv the support you get on this forum!

Cheers

platojones · Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2002 3:20 pm Post subject:

Well, first i want to thank you both for your very helpful responses.

After compairing the modules loaded against kim's list it was obvious that things were set up correctly, so I went to alsamixer (again) and my muting each channel, found that the 'SBLIVE DIGITAL' channel was the source of my troubles. Thanks zen_guerilla for the tip. Gotta luv the support you get on this forum!

Cheers