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Do you run ALSA?
Yup, I run ALSA
72%
 72%  [ 99 ]
I don't like it that much...
11%
 11%  [ 16 ]
No way
13%
 13%  [ 18 ]
What's ALSA?
2%
 2%  [ 3 ]
Total Votes : 136

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Nitro
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2002 7:50 pm    Post subject: Do you use ALSA? Reply with quote

Spent part of today messing with ALSA and gave up on it. XMMS sounded alittle scratchy with my AALSA module, so I reverted back to the emu10k1 module included with the kernel tree.

I'm thinking, ALSA *should* be better right? So, I'm wondering what you guys are using.
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sven
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2002 9:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My alsa works fine ... I have a SoundBlaster PCI 128 which is counted among the standard soundcards, I guess.
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rlyacht
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2002 11:09 pm    Post subject: What am I missing? Reply with quote

I once went to the trouble of installing alsa on an old RH system because also supported my sound card and this RH didn't. It worked, but was horribly painful. I was relieved when a new kernel came with a driver for my sound card, and I immediately switched. What's to prefer about alsa?
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sven
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2002 11:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hmm, now you made me think about this one!

Kernel also supports the Ens1370 chipset of my soundcard ... so, why am I using alsa then??

What are the advantages/disadvantages of alsa and kernel sound modules?
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Malakin
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2002 11:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Now that I finally got it working I'm using alsa and it seems to be working fine. I unmasked the 0.9.0rc1 ebuilds and used them. kernel sound support worked fine in the first place but I thought I'd install alsa just for the hell of it.

I'm using an integrated soundblaster 128, which goes under a ton of different names but uses the Ens1371 module.

For those who don't already know alsa is in the 2.5 kernel since it's considered the next sound architecture for Linux.
http://www.alsa-project.org/
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dArkMaGE
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 28, 2002 12:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

alsa supposedly has better support for more soundcards and also bunches of new features and what not...
my one complaint is that i have an sb live card and using the kernel (oss) emu10k1 driver i am able to use both of my sound out ports while with alsa (and windoze for that matter) only one works... what gives... oh well
alsa seems to be the way of the future so i figure i might as well jump on the bandwagon :)
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grakker
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 28, 2002 12:16 am    Post subject: alsa sound freezes Reply with quote

I tried alsa about a year ago. I ran into problems where things would freeze up, until I quit xmms. Just weird lockups. And as another poster said, the kernel sound modules work great for me.
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Nitro
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 28, 2002 12:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My gripes about ALSA are that my little gkrellm mixer doesn't work (I tried using the oss mixer module too...), some programs don't support it well, and since we are in the middle of .5 and .9 all the other programs are going to have to be updated to use the new libraries I would imagine.

Until someone gives me a good reason to switch, my SB Live and I are doing (and sounding :)) fine.
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Target
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 28, 2002 12:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

We should just bite the bullet and go to 0.9.0. Recompile anything built against alsa.

0.5.x is so horribly depricated that the alsa team declared it as such while 0.9.0 was still being beta tested- it had already surpassed its predecessor. :P
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zerogeny
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 28, 2002 1:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

upside: sounds better
downside: only 2 speakers

i want 4.1 support damn alsa peoples ! :twisted:
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ProGuy
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 28, 2002 3:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
We should just bite the bullet and go to 0.9.0. Recompile anything built against alsa.


I agree, but I am not sure that programs with ALSA support, have support for the ALSA 0.9.x series.
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mr_fugita
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 28, 2002 9:49 pm    Post subject: never Reply with quote

I could never get it to work with the emu10k1 module...
it kept giving silly mixer errors, etc. I ended up using the kernel driver instead of the alsa one..

:roll:
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Target
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 29, 2002 12:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
I agree, but I am not sure that programs with ALSA support, have support for the ALSA 0.9.x series.

Seeing as the other distros (like Sorcerer, in particular) have been using the 0.9.0 betas without a problem, I daresay "all of them". :D
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spendabuck
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 29, 2002 2:05 pm    Post subject: Nogo Reply with quote

:roll: I can't get mine to work properly, I followed the tutorial but got stuck at the /usr/sbin/MAKEDEV audio lots of permission denied, don't know what to do. any ideas.
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squanto
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 29, 2002 3:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I am running Alsa, as per the Gentoo Desktop setup info, but use the OSS modules to play XMMS, so due to the fact that it works, and sounds just as good as it did under RH, where I had no idea what I was using, I don't mind. I still have no idea what I am doing... but oh well, can't argue if it works.
I use alsamixer so I assume that alsa is working, and xmms has no problems, I can do wine with sound and play RTCW with no probs.
Running SB16 pci which uses esn1371 module.

-Andrew
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squanto
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 29, 2002 3:11 pm    Post subject: Re: Nogo Reply with quote

spendabuck wrote:
:roll: I can't get mine to work properly, I followed the tutorial but got stuck at the /usr/sbin/MAKEDEV audio lots of permission denied, don't know what to do. any ideas.


are you running devfs?
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JHuizingh
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 7:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Squanto, I have been having problems with xmms and alsa. How do you have your system set up? Do you actually load both the alsa drivers and the kernel drivers? What ouptut plugin do you have xmms using?
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TomorrowPlusX
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 7:59 pm    Post subject: OSS Compat modules Reply with quote

I have a question -- int the KDE control center, under the sound server options, is the option to have arts autodetect the underlying sound system. I had some problems iwth noatun a while back and ran artsd with debug output (to send to a noatun developer). I noticed while artsd was starting that it detected both the presence of alsa and oss, but chose oss (for some internal weighting reason).

So, my question is, do I need the oss compatibility layer? If artsd can talk directly to alsa, why bother with a compatibility framework? Or is artsd still using alsa .5.x apis?

Of course, I could just try and see, but I'm at work, not at home with my laptop.
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pjp
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 8:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm using alsa, but I'm not thrilled with it. I'm also using an old sound card, so I'm willing to give alsa some leeway. Once I got it working, I just quit messing with sound. In fact, I still get an error message at boot, I just haven't had the interest to make it go away.
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n0n
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 9:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have to use ALSA on my Laptop because the OSS driver for its soundcard is hopelessly nonworkable. Or, rather, it's fine, but sampling is stuck at 48KHz, which not everything understands, and I can't use most of my favorite sound apps with it. So I installed ALSA 0.9.whatever with OSS emulation on, and just about everything's worked perfectly. There's been the occasional rough bit. Quake 3 refuses to run with sound on, although that wasn't surprising. A few other minor things have problems, but on the whole, it's worked out really well.

On my desktop machine, though, I stuck with OSS when doing Gentoo. I don't like having to go through emulation layers just to hear sound, and a lot of the programs I use only support OSS. I suppose that's kind of like any new, cool, technology; for awhile you've gotta either suck it up (is that even a phrase?) and deal with the fact that some of your apps won't work with the new stuff, or just stick with the tried-and-true. :P Although really the OSS emulation in ALSA 0.9 *is* pretty good.

Okay, I've rambled for quite a bit now.
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nitro322
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 10:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is a suggestion to anyone (like Nitro) that has a SB Live! I have one myself, and I initially used the kernel driver as it worked well enough. However, I very quickly hit some limitations, such as I couldn't get digital out working (can be fixed, though, with emu-tools), and I couldn't get AC3 bypass to work when watching DVDs (which cannot be fixed using the kernel driver). I initially tried switching over to ALSA, and after a good while of banging my head agains the wall I managed to get it working, but I really didn't care for it. Didn't sound very good in general, low volume, static in the speakers, etc.

So, I decided to use the drivers available from http://www.sf.net/projects/emu10k1/, which I had thought was the same as the kernel. Turns out, however, that they're much more up-to-date than the kernel, support every feature I need (including AC3 bypass), and sound just as good as the Windows drivers. It's also very easy to install, and loads as a regular kernel module, so you don't have to deal with all the extra ALSA stuff.

Sorry, this turned out to be longer than I expected. Bottom-line: if you want to try (or absolutely need) ALSA, fine, go for it, but if it doesn't work, the updated emu10k1 drivers should take care of everything you need. Give 'em a try.
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pjp
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 31, 2002 12:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I didn't see anything listed on the page about which sound cards are supported... any ideas, or did I miss it?
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Martin
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 31, 2002 1:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Isn't ALSA going to be included ala kernel?

I use ALSA, but can't set the volume in XMMS. That's still something I have to work on. :lol:
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nitro322
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 31, 2002 3:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

kanuslupus wrote:
I didn't see anything listed on the page about which sound cards are supported... any ideas, or did I miss it?


Are you talking about the page I listed? They support (as far as I know) all cards based on the emu10k1 audiochipset, which is all Live! cards. The Audigy has a slightly newer and revised chip (emu10k2, I think), but it's essentially the same and these drivers should work for it as well, although I've never tested it.
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masseya
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 31, 2002 3:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Martin wrote:
Isn't ALSA going to be included ala kernel?

I use ALSA, but can't set the volume in XMMS. That's still something I have to work on. :lol:

Do an emerge -s and make sure that you have all the ebuilds that are needed to make alsa and xmms play nicely. Also, is there a reason that this isn't in the hardware forum? I don't think it has much to do with Desktop Environments.
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