Sound Blaster Audigy LS owners post here some info

Message

w0rm · Post by **w0rm** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 3:14 pm

Hello,
I have Sound Blaster Audigy LS (5.1) and I want some information about it from other owners of this soundcard.
Firstly, if you have it, have you any problems with it on linux? If not, please post your kernel and alsa versions.
I've had a lot of problems with it on linux. I've tried many variants - using 2.6.10 kernel with alsa compiled in kernel, also I've tried to compile alsa separately (I've disabled alsa in kernel of course, and i've used proper driver for audigy ls, called caXXX or smth, can't remember now) and I didn't get the result that I wanted to get. Firstly, my sound worked fine, but I've only had 2 speakers working (I have 5.1 sound system) and alsamixer gave me nothing - in the upper left corner, where the card name should be displayed, there was some other card, and the alsamixer's controls where somehow different so I couldn't configure my 5.1 properly (only 2 front speakers were working). After trying to reconfigure alsa, recompile kernel I've got another problem - the playback of the sound was very fast and the sound quality was dirty. I've tried both alsa 1.0.8rc1 and the 1.0.8 version, but that gave me no result. I've searched for the solution in the forums too, but none helped. I'm stick with this problem and I can't use Gentoo properly so I think maybe you will be so kind to help me. If you don't know what's the solution of this problem, but you have SB Audigy LS which is working fine for you, please, please, PLEASE post your kernel version, alsa version and anything you think can be helpfull.
Thanks in advance and sorry for bad english.

COiN3D · Post by **COiN3D** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 3:21 pm

Hi there,

I have an Audigy LS, too, and I'm very disappointed because Alsa doesn't really take care of Audigy LS - Users.

But I have a solution for you

First of all, forget Alsa. You won't get your surround-speakers working. Better, go on www.opensound.com and download these drivers. Some time ago these special-OSS drivers became free for personal use, so get it. Installation is quite simple, but you have to deactivate sound-card support completely in your Kernel. After that, just extract the installer and run it, it should do the rest for you.

Good luck,

w0rm · Post by **w0rm** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 4:38 pm

well I was dissapointed too, because I thought that all Audigy soundcard are fully supported on linux.
Going to try your solution this evening, thanks for your reply

Levi · Post by **Levi** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 9:37 pm

One second please: The Audigy LS IS supported through the ca0106 (that's the chip on the audigy ls) module.
The driver is very new, it was first introduced in alsa-drivers 1.0.6, that's why there is a good chance the alsa included with your kernel doesn't have the driver yet.

Also, that driver does support surround sound, I have no clue why re-nice says there isn't...
What the driver is lacking is 2ch->4ch copying for stereo output, so that will be played only through front speakers.

COiN3D · Post by **COiN3D** » Sun Mar 13, 2005 9:52 pm

Levi wrote:One second please: The Audigy LS IS supported through the ca0106 (that's the chip on the audigy ls) module.
The driver is very new, it was first introduced in alsa-drivers 1.0.6, that's why there is a good chance the alsa included with your kernel doesn't have the driver yet.

Also, that driver does support surround sound, I have no clue why re-nice says there isn't...
What the driver is lacking is 2ch->4ch copying for stereo output, so that will be played only through front speakers.

Try it out and you'll see that surround won't work. OSS works just great for me, and it has even better sound quality than alsa.

Btw, my 200th posting!

leighgiles · Post by **leighgiles** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 11:58 pm

I have an Audigy LS and I would have to say that I'm disappointed.

I have had the card for about 7 months and I've had about 2 months use from it.

I originally bought it because the onboard sound - via8235 - was terrible.
I was using kernel 2.6.5 then and I downloaded alsa 1.0.7 and it took around a month and a kernel change to 2.6.7 for the card to work.
In mid December on kernel 2.6.9 and after I upgraded to gcc 3.4.3 it stopped working and I have been unable to get it to work again.
I've downloaded alsa 1.0.8 and tried ca0106 - but no joy. I'm using kernel 2.6.10-r7 now because of the ATI video card drivers.

Luckily the onboard sound has improved out of sight with 1.0.8 so I'm using that

When the Audigy was working it was great - but it is a bit of a black art to get and to keep it working

Leigh

Note

The card is now working - the spidf output needs to be muted when using the analogue output - it sounds great

wickwire · Post by **wickwire** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 2:37 am

I also bought this soundcard recently, figuring it'd give me hardware mixing and everything else (I own an NForce2 mobo) - got into trouble installing it using ALSA, found out it's poorly supported (only got 2.0 stereo and no capture even) - followed COiN3D's directions to the letter and took a chance with OSS from their website and it's now working 5.1, just finished setting things up - I'll have to figure out a way to start it up automagically at boot because even though I selected the option on the installer, it isn't working... other than that, after it's fired up, sound is better and I can have surround indeed!
Not even udev managed to stop the revolution... ehehehehehhe

Thanks for the help on what seemed like a lost cause...!

I'll test capture whenever I can, though it's of little interest to me, but I suspect it will work too, the mixer has the volume controls there...

Well, see you and thanks once again, just to be the one guy reporting back with a happy ending!

UgolinoII · Post by **UgolinoII** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 1:58 pm

I would also like to thank COiN3D.

One assumes that when something is (DEPRECATED) in the kernal, that its time has come.

Not so. Within 2 minutes of having decided to give OSS another try (untar, run oss-install, click a few next buttons) I heard sound from all 5 of my speakers!

Quite pleasing after having spent hours wrestling with various alsa incarnations.

Try OSS, it just works!

ranmakun · Post by **ranmakun** » Sun Jul 17, 2005 4:44 am

Ok, I bought a SB Live! 24bit and faced all these problems. I decided I wanted to use ALSA (intead of the OSS solution some guys sugested) and told to myself there must be a way to have surround sound. I only tried these things with 4 speakers, I wanted to duplicate my sound from the front speakers to the rear ones to have two independent stereo sound outputs (my PC and my stereo system)
So far this is what I've discovered:

With the following .asoundrc file I can have dmix and only my front speakers: (I guess this is what everyone have done without problems)

Code: Select all

pcm.dmixer {
    type dmix
    ipc_key 13761
    slave {
                pcm "hw:0,0"
                channels        4
                rate            48000
                period_size     4096
                buffer_size     81920
                period_time     84000
                buffer_time     504000
    }

    bindings {
        0 0;
        1 1;
    }
}

pcm.dsp0 {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.!default {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.default {
   type plug
   slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

ctl.mixer0 {
    type hw
    card 0
}

I was also able to route sound to my rear speakers by changing the following in that .asoundrc file:

Code: Select all

                pcm "hw:0,0" #remove this one
                pcm "hw:0,1" #add this one

So far, I was happy at least to be able to have my output in the rear channel. But couldn't have it simultaneously in both channels.
The only way I could achieve this was disabling dmix by using the following .asoundrc file.

Code: Select all

pcm.dmixer {
    type route
        slave.pcm surround40
    slave.channels 4
    ttable.0.0 1
    ttable.1.1 1
    ttable.0.2 1
    ttable.1.3 1
}


pcm.dsp0 {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.!default {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.default {
   type plug
   slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

ctl.mixer0 {
    type hw
    card 0
}

For some reason, there seems to be a problem combining these two approaches to have dmix AND the four channels working at the same time. If anyone knows if this is some kind of limitation of dmix or what could be the problem please post what you know. So far this is what I've got, I guess this will apply for all 7.1 channels, I didn't try that.

demian · Post by **demian** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 2:35 am

Well, I've been searching for quite a few days on a way to use my brand new Audigy LS with Xine and watch my DVDs with 5.1 sound with no success... well, actually, the 5.1 part was easy and worked with no hassle at all, both with in-kernel drivers and with alsa-driver... but the damn xine-lib has bug (afaik still open) that makes it crash when a dvd has 2.0 menu and 5.1 sound... after a lot of googling around I found out the problem was with the way it worked together (or didn't) witrh dmix... so, what to do? disable dmix... but I still couldn't figure out how... until your post... well, thanks a lot, now I can say I'm happy with my SB Audigy!!! (I got it for HTPC running Freevo, btw... so I don't really need dmix...)

cheers,

VsMaX · Post by **VsMaX** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 5:37 pm

I dont have any problems now with support for sound blaster Ls - both kernel and alsa-driver support sound blaster LS

dos14hk · Post by **dos14hk** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 3:45 pm

COiN3D wrote:
Levi wrote:One second please: The Audigy LS IS supported through the ca0106 (that's the chip on the audigy ls) module.
The driver is very new, it was first introduced in alsa-drivers 1.0.6, that's why there is a good chance the alsa included with your kernel doesn't have the driver yet.

Also, that driver does support surround sound, I have no clue why re-nice says there isn't...
What the driver is lacking is 2ch->4ch copying for stereo output, so that will be played only through front speakers.
Try it out and you'll see that surround won't work. OSS works just great for me, and it has even better sound quality than alsa.

Btw, my 200th posting!

Installed the OSS external, created an init.d script : all alsa removed except alsa-lib. All working. OSS just works FANTASTIC!

Gnome Integration Complete with OSS. This is a great fix, many thanks.

__Jackal__ · Post by **__Jackal__** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 1:24 am

I'm having the same troubles with that card. What do you mean oss external? I don't see that when i do emerge --search oss

dos14hk · Post by **dos14hk** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 11:23 pm

__Jackal__ wrote:I'm having the same troubles with that card. What do you mean oss external? I don't see that when i do emerge --search oss

Oops, sorry been away fro a while (i went over to the dark side ..... CRUX LINUX! But i'm back.)

Don't bother with 4Front's external OSS (Google 4front OSS if you've never heard of it) Alsa ..14-rc1 fixes most of these problems.

If things still don't work just go to 4Front's web site and download the older OSS version, install and your card will be ready within seconds:

DOWNLOAD: http://www.4front-tech.com/release/oss3 ... arm.tar.gz

INSTRUCTIONS: http://www.4front-tech.com/install_gzipped.html

PS: I disabled my onboard Live 24Bit (Sound Quality was less than perfect) and installed a pci card (Audigy4) which is an emu10k1 card (so much better!!).
In the beta version of Alsa the Audigy4 is recognized properly and the sound quality is marvelous.

sege · Post by **sege** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 4:10 pm

Well now boys and girls,

here we are again !
Thanks for this infos about the opensound.com driver. Worked like a charm for me... I just reinstalled gentoo on my comp and also reinstalled that oss driver. So what know ? The driver is licensed till YESTERDAY !

This OSS version expired: 12/2006
Please download the latest OSS version from http://www.opensound.com/download.cgi

quick workaround:
turn back the time helps to start the driver, but how can this be fixed ?

sege

skinny_p · Post by **skinny_p** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 7:27 pm

hi

Working with alsa

lspci
03:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy LS

uname -a
Linux 2.6.18-gentoo-r6 #1 SMP Sun Dec 31 01:23:25 CET 2006 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

emerge -pv alsa-utils
[ebuild R ] media-sound/alsa-utils-1.0.13 USE="nls" 0 kB

make.conf
ALSA_CARDS="snd_ca0106" (i'm not using alsa-drivers)

my .asoundrc (5.1 working)

pcm.!dmix {
type plug
slave {
pcm surround51
channels 6
}
}
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmix"
slave.channels 6
route_policy duplicate
}

.openalrc

# Use ALSA (also valid: sdl, native)
(define devices '(alsa))
#(define devices '(sdl))
#(define devices '(native))

# Four speaker surround with ALSA
(define speaker-num 6)
(define alsa-out-device "surround51:0,0")

# For ALSA-in support (ie. voice chat)
(define alsa-in-device "hw:0,0")

sources
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/do ... ule=ca0106

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-35 ... a0106.html

sege · Post by **sege** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 9:46 am

wonderful !

works for 7.1, too ! Just change the

Code: Select all

channels 6
slave.channels 6
speaker-num 6
surround51

to

Code: Select all

channels 8
slave.channels 8
speaker-num 8
surround71

have fun !

Braveheart1980 · Post by **Braveheart1980** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 2:58 pm

I am having a very similar problem here

avstaim · Post by **avstaim** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 7:51 am

pcm.!dmix {
type plug
slave {
pcm surround51
channels 6
}
}
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmix"
slave.channels 6
route_policy duplicate
}

I've tried this config - no success! Dmix doesn't work and I get "aplay: main:545: audio open error: Device or resource busy" when I'm trying to use it. :(

Sound Blaster Audigy LS owners post here some info

Sound Blaster Audigy LS owners post here some info

SB Audigy LS with OSS

Thanks A Lot!!