Audigy 2 NX in linux? / USB GPS?

SalsaDoom · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 4:21 pm Post subject: Audigy 2 NX in linux? / USB GPS?

Hey fellas,

I'm thinking about purchasing a Audigy2 NX (usb2) device for my linux (only) laptop. The built in soundcard and speakers are just nasty and I'd love to get something better.. also, gadgets are cool ;)

Anyway, I haven't really heard about too many linux users owning one of these things, google only showed up a one or two people.. here is my main concideration really: Hardware Mixing. dmix just doesn't work that great.. Anyone know if this device supports hardware mixing and sterio in more then two speakers (even via replication?)

Thanks! :)

Also! Anyone know of a good, small, NMEA compatible usb GPS receiver that works well in linux? From what I understand about this, anything NMEA compatible should work in linux, but most things assume serial ports and my laptop doesn't even have serial ports ;( so that leaves me with usb -- which I think is better anyway. Any suggestions? I was looking at the BU303, but I couldn't find anyone who had one with linux. Simpler is better, I don't want any stuff with palm os or anything, I'm gonna use GPSDrive.

--SD

meteor · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 7:56 pm Post subject:

I just bought my Audigy2 NX yesterday. After a few hours of messing around with it, I managed to make it work. So far I'm only using it for headphones. It works great too. It is not on alsa-project as a supported soundcard, but it does work with the ALSA USB driver and an .asoundrc file to up-sample or down-sample.

It comes with a remote, which I haven't tried out yet.

chichibabin · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 24 Jul 2004 Posts: 133

HAve you tested the line recording yet?
Sat

meteor · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 3:45 pm Post subject:

SalsaDoom · Posted: Thu Oct 14, 2004 2:30 am Post subject:

meteor: How about hardware mixing? I mean, can you natively (not using esd,arts or dmix) play multiple sounds at once?

And.. has no one played around with gps recievers in Gentoo?

--SD

micmac · l33t Joined: 28 Nov 2003 Posts: 996

Hi,

hardware mixing is a no on this card. When I use dmix to do that it gets bad and I get sound skips while drives are accessed. Also, I have problems with volume control. I can only lower/raise it with a slider in alsamixer called Speaker 2. Well, actually there are 4 sliders called "Speaker 2" and only the leftest does work. I use the digital out. Teh bad thing is, apps like xmms and mplayer won't detect this slider and so I can't control volume with them.

Another thing that I don't like is that it has an external power supply. But that's a matter of personal taste.
I go with the onboard sound for the time beeing using headphones, until I find something better. I read the Audiotrak Optoplay should work fine with Linux. Maybe I'll check it out sometimes.

Greetings

mic

DawgG · l33t Joined: 17 Sep 2003 Posts: 866

i use a navilock-usb-gps-receiver (www.navilock.de; gpsdrive lists it as known to work) and it works (beauti)fully. with 3 cds of routing/ mapping-software (which is completely useless as it only works with doze and the maps are in some strange format i cannot even read...) it cost me 100 (new).

it's actually a serial device with a usb-converter-chip (pl-202??sth.) which is supported by the kernel; just turn it on somewhere in the usb-device-section (i use it with 2.6.9(-rc1) and 2.6.10-rc1).
kismet with gpsdrive (www.gpsdrive.cc) is fun, gpsdrive includes a gpsd which can deliver gpsdata with a socket. if connect to gpsd with telnet, you see all the gpsdata.

there's a nice article about all this in the october/november issue of the (german) computer magazine FreeX. (it's not quite as easy as described there, but it works)

DeadMonkey · Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2004 1:16 pm Post subject:

I have one of these and after going from Windows 2k to Gentoo I've had to go back to my SB Live 5.1 card.

The problem is the fact that it doesn't do anything well without resampling. So I had to set everything at 48kHz vs 44kHz.

With arts it ran pretty well, but try doing anything else (ie, amarok, kaffeine and kmplayer with xine support or pure alsa) and it's a pain to configure.

Maybe one of these days I'll actually work a little harder at it, but for now what I have works well.

micmac · l33t Joined: 28 Nov 2003 Posts: 996

Well,

the NX is a pain in the behind if used with dmix, because playback will stop randomly while the harddisk is accessed. So I'd rather use it without. For the sample rate conversion you just put this in your /home/'$USER'/.asoundrc:

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave {
pcm {
type hw
card 0
}
rate 48000
}
}

Luck!
mic

DeadMonkey · Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 3:00 pm Post subject:

I'm just replying for the sake of replying... :-)

I hooked up my Audidy NX2 USB and I'm very happy again. I have arts working the arts stuff and with the .asoundrc entry micmac mentioned and everything else works well too!

Just wondering, can you post the rest of your .asoundrc file? I can't get any output out of the rear speakers on a 5.1 setup. I'm not sure if that's a limitation with the current drivers for alsa or if there's something I can fix in the .asoundrc file.

Thanks!

micmac · l33t Joined: 28 Nov 2003 Posts: 996

Sorry, no.

a) the above was all I had in asoundrc
b) I don't have the card anymore. I gave it back because it didn't meet my expectations.

luck
mic

weirdo · Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 10:52 pm Post subject:

does any other external card work with linux ? I really need a external sound card now that my head phone jack is broken.

Weirdo

HomeDawg · n00b Joined: 30 Aug 2004 Posts: 21

I've had a NX2 for quite a while now, Ive been a windows use all my life and I decided its time for a change, So, I've installed gentoo, everything seems to work great except my sound card. any ideas? Im using the .asoundrc from micmac yet that hasnt done it.
lspci