what sound card do you use?

taskara · Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2002 9:49 am Post subject: what sound card do you use?

I was curious to see what the majority of gentoo people use as their sound card (be it on board or pci based).

How do you rate the quality of the sound?

and what drivers do you use ? kernel? alsa ? other?

I use pci 128 atm, with kernel sound. quite happy with it.

jondkent · Apprentice Joined: 26 Jul 2002 Posts: 289 Location: London

Current use alsa on my Gentoo box, which is a portable. On my Debian box I use SB Live and OSS, but as this a Gentoo forum I choose AC97.

Re sound I think alsa lacking a little in depth, OSS is still better I find, but I use my Gentoo portable for coding and writting so I don't tend to need sound much

broschi · Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2002 10:35 pm Post subject:

SB's are legendary. While the hardware acceleration pretty much sucks all I need from this card is playback, no fancy 3d effects and all. The lowest price/quality/linux compability ratio for me.
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taskara · Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2002 10:43 pm Post subject:

do people think that C-Media 6 channel (with kernel support), or REALTEK 6 -channel (with alsa drivers) are the better sound card ?

cause I'm about to buy a new mainboard, and the asus comes with realtek, but the msi comes with c-media - so not sure which sound is better for linux...

broschi · Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2002 10:47 pm Post subject:

It depends if they are as reliable as Realtek make their NICs!
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taskara · Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2002 11:05 pm Post subject:

hehe good point !

well I have used the realtek 6-channel sound in linux, and asus and abit and other major manufacturers are all using it as their standard on-board sound now, instead of the c-media

check it out

Features: (whether they are all supported in linux or not, I'm not sure)
High-performance CODEC with high S/N ratio (>90 dB)
18-bit ADC and 20-bit DAC resolution
Compliant with AC'97 2.2 specifications
18-bit stereo full-duplex CODEC with independent and variable sampling rate
4 analog line-level stereo inputs with 5-bit volume control: LINE_IN, CD, VIDEO, AUX
2 analog line-level mono inputs: PC_BEEP, PHONE_IN
Mono output with 5-bit volume control
Stereo output with 5-bit volume control
6 channel slot selectable DAC output for multi-channel applications
2 MIC inputs, which are software selectable
Power management capabilities
3D Stereo enhancement
Embedded 50mW/20ohm OP at front LINE output
External amplifier power down capability
Digital S/PDIF output
Digital S/PDIF input (ALC650 Rev. E or later)
No external crystal/clock required
Supports 1 general purpose I/O pin
Power supply: digital: 3.3V; analog: 5V/3.3V
Standard 48-pin LQFP package

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20485

Chat related rather than support.
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taskara · Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2002 11:11 pm Post subject:

true..

gsfgf · Veteran Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 1266

i gots a cmpci and an ac97 card. Both have decent quality when pluggeded into decent speakers. I don't have much to compare it to. onboard to win bizzatches.

KiTaSuMbA · Guru Joined: 28 Jun 2002 Posts: 430 Location: Naples Italy

Ok, under linux I use SB128 (driven by OSS in slack and Alsa in gentoo) while on win98 I got running the guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS (which there is no way to make it work under linux, thus the SB).
I find that Alsa drives my SB128 quite better than OSS (although it boosts up a bit too much the bass) but I don't care much as I only use it for multimedia (playback an mp3 or two, watch a movie etc.). Since I'm going to change my primary soundcard soon though (and I'll make sure it's alsa-supported) this will change as I plan to experiment some music making under linux (God help me!

).
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yokem55 · Guru Joined: 18 Apr 2002 Posts: 360 Location: Oregon

Do some people have problems with Realtek nic's? True they are very cheap, but I've never had any problems with mine. I don't think I would use one for a production level server, but they've worked fine on my desktop machines....

taskara · Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2002 9:07 am Post subject:

I think realtek nics are great - mostly reliable, cheap and VERY WELL supported!

thanks for your input everyone!

lanark · Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2002 3:43 pm Post subject:

I'm using two cards, M-Audio Delta 44 and SB Live!

Both of them work very very well with ALSA drivers
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progster · Apprentice Joined: 16 Jul 2002 Posts: 271

AC97 with alsa, though I would like to be able to have more sound sources at once (eg have xmms running and playing ut2003, having sound from both).

~Progster

pizen · Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2002 5:15 pm Post subject:

I'm using a SB Live with kernel sound and I have no complaints.

oniq · Guru Joined: 02 Sep 2002 Posts: 597 Location: Connecticut

My laptop has a SoundMax soundcard, which is supported under the AC'97 chipset. The sound quality is fine, probably not as good as it is in Windows XP, but it is about the same as it is in Windows 2000. My laptop isn't *officially* supported under Windows 2000, so some of the drivers were hard to come by. But in Linux it was much easier to get my laptop running!

Supported in the kernel, don't need alsa or similar.
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lanark · Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2002 6:57 pm Post subject:

oniq · Guru Joined: 02 Sep 2002 Posts: 597 Location: Connecticut

lanark · Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2002 8:32 pm Post subject:

ReBirth · n00b Joined: 17 Oct 2002 Posts: 8 Location: Hong Kong

I am using sb live with the kernel driver and works fine so far.

May try to use the C-media card in my mobo and see which is better? sb live or C-media.

taskara · Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2002 10:36 pm Post subject:

cool - the kernel gives you the option to setup the number of speakers u want to use with your c-media controller. multi channel bult into the kernel - that's pretty impressive.. have to assume the sound is quite good then from the c-media, but if you can test it, that would be sweet

I think the realtek solution if software sound, whereas the c-media is half hardware half software driven..

SteelRage · Apprentice Joined: 17 Nov 2003 Posts: 192

Finally... I have been able to get my Echo-Digital MIA working...

and now.. let's fight with JAck/ardour ;-)

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Roguelazer · Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 12:05 pm Post subject:

SBLive!Value here.
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Quake · n00b Joined: 28 Sep 2003 Posts: 4

SbLive value here with Alsa.

cbr · Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 2:36 pm Post subject:

Does SB Live! 5.1 with ALSA support hardware mixing by default? No need to use dmix etc.?