Is alsa REALLY better than OSS?

Message

Xiderpunk · Post by **Xiderpunk** » Sun May 30, 2004 6:34 pm

Since using the 2.6 kernel I have been using ALSA, the thing is I have had more problems than I ever had with OSS. For instance, at the moment I have sound, but I am unable to control volumes, tones etc from within KMix, accept by using the 3D surround control (which appears to map to master volume?!?).

I have alsa compiled into the kernel and DMESG correctly show the SB Live! being picked up as device #0. Permissions on /dev/sound/* are all root:audio and my user account belongs to the audio group. I have tried deleting all the kmix configuration files in ~/.kde/share/config and also /etc/asound.state, none of which made any difference.

alsamixer from alsa-utils correctly detects the SB Live card however suffers from the same problem as kmix, kmix reports in ~/.xsession-errors: kmix: ERROR: Alsa mixer cannot be found.

Is there one single BENEFIT that anyone can name why we should be using ALSA???

teedog · Post by **teedog** » Sun May 30, 2004 6:48 pm

I'm a newbie to Linux, but here's what I found through Google:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7391

wdreinhart · Post by **wdreinhart** » Sun May 30, 2004 7:43 pm

Yes, there is a benefit: dmix

ALSA lets me have more than one app playing sound at a time, without the annoying latency of ESD or arts. Heck, you can even have multiple USERS playing sound on the same device! (which is neat, but mostly useless on a desktop machine)

searcher · Post by **searcher** » Sun May 30, 2004 9:54 pm

If you have `alsa' in your USE-flags and you recompile arts it will give you the option to use the alsa sound system from within arts. That should solve most of your mixing problems from within KDE.

~searcher

theturner · Post by **theturner** » Sun May 30, 2004 11:00 pm

Is alsa REALLY better than OSS?

yes.
ARTS is crap.

Xiderpunk · Post by **Xiderpunk** » Sun May 30, 2004 11:42 pm

I have ALSA in my USE flags and am able to select ALSA as the sound system inside KDE, I have sound inside KDE just the mixing doesn't work, thereby currently is working less well then the old OSS.

Will take a look into dmix, thanks.

Incidentally, don't get me wrong, I want to like ALSA and like the engineering principals behind it.. however so far it seems to have proven to be problematic. My argument is that OSS just 'works' with few problems.

theturner: arts has nothing to do with OSS v ALSA, aRts is the core sound system for KDE, and is short for "analog realtime synthesizer". aRts is designed to create or process sound using small specialized modules. These may create a waveform, play samples, filter data, add signals, perform effects (like delay, flanger or chorus), or output the data to the soundcard. So please enlighten me as to what you mean??

sindre · Post by **sindre** » Mon May 31, 2004 12:29 am

A soundblaster live shouldn't need dmix as alsa supports hardware mixing on the soundblaster live.

roothorick · Post by **roothorick** » Mon May 31, 2004 12:36 am

I still remember a developer in one of the projects I work on (StepMania) comment about just how hard it is to get decent audio sync using the OSS APIs. That's reason enough for me.

Anyway, it sounds to me like Kmix has little/nothing to do with aRts and only supports OSS. My guess is it's trying to play with the soundcard through ALSA's OSS emulation, which apparently doesn't work very well. I recommend using the usual alsamixer or find a good GUI ALSA mixer utility.

Sotol · Post by **Sotol** » Mon May 31, 2004 5:51 am

I have the exact same problem. No matter how much I try I can't
get the same sound as when I used the emu10k1 driver.

jmercer · Post by **jmercer** » Mon May 31, 2004 5:08 pm

Yeah, I was having a lot of problems over the weekend too. Upgraded to 2.6.7 from a 2.4 kernel and decided to try this Alsa thing. Result: Only sounds as root or sound as my normal user if I plug the speakers into the rear out. I eventually recompiled the alsa drivers from the kernel, not from alsa-drivers, unloaded all the old ones and reloaded the new ones, switched to the standard sound jack on my card (sound blaster live!), goofed around with /etc/security/console.perms and then went back into kde. I found that my pcm volume slider was way down in alsamixer so I brought it up to about 66% and magically I had sound again and I'm able to control it with kmix's volume sliders and also get my left/right fade.

This may be the first thread ever to be moved _from_ off the wall into a real section, of course that's assuming this stuff helps.

Symptoms of my problem: Everything would appear to play, noatun would tick off the seconds of an mp3 but no sound would come out. No actual errors, just no sound.

When I was in the rear-channel jack, I could control it with the 3d sound slider, unmute (or mute, I forget) the SB Live Analog/Digital Output Jack in alsamixer, turn up PCM, don't touch the captures unless you want feedback that drives your landlords dogs crazy.

outspoken · Post by **outspoken** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 3:30 am

thanks for the advice.. im installing a new machine with a sb-live! and im going to use alsa.

btw, kittytime - awesome icon.. kids in the hall rocks!

drhirsch · Post by **drhirsch** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 11:27 am

sindre wrote:A soundblaster live shouldn't need dmix as alsa supports hardware mixing on the soundblaster live.

So does oss.

Since I'm not able to use 5.1 sound properly with alsa, I will go back to oss again (the second time). For me, it is simply not usable since I can't get a proper low pass for the subwoofer and a high pass for the 5 other speakers to work. It wasn't that simple in OSS either, but at least there exists a solution.

geordie · Post by **geordie** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 9:34 pm

yes more than one app can access the soundcard

hw-tph · Post by **hw-tph** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 10:06 pm

A reason why Alsa is better than OSS? I'll give you one:
Alsa + Jack + Ardour = Digital audio workstation

My Windows box running Logic in my studio is getting tough competition from my old desktop with Ardour.

Håkan

Woody · Post by **Woody** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 11:03 pm

There is nothing to stop one from using an oss output plugin for
jack and hence use any jack application without alsa.

hw-tph · Post by **hw-tph** » Tue Jun 01, 2004 11:43 pm

And OSS/Free supports the STAudio C-Port 2000 / DSP2496 Mk.I, like Alsa does?

Håkan