NForce3 Sound or Creative SoundBlaster 5.1?

chrroessner

Hi,

I am getting sick with the NForce3 stuff. I have the following situation: I have compiled kernel 2.6.9_rc3 with intel8x0 support. My Sound is connected with the SPDIF to my receiver.

1) MPlayer only works with the ALSA-OSS emulation. I am not sure if it really does surround5.1

2) Startup-sound in KDE only works with an external player (play)

3) Kphone does not work. Neither listening nor microphone

This is really bad! :-(

I followed the instructions on gentoo-wiki.com; using asound.conf. But same results, so I returned using the kernel built-in ALSA support. Also I use arts again, otherwise KDE does not play sound over SPDIF.

Is there a chance to get ALL sound over SPDIF and having 5.1 where possible?

Should I give up and use my (old) SoundBlaster 5.1 Live! with linux? I know I would have to use the emu10k1.

I really would appreciate some hints here.

Thanks in advance

Christian

-------
Gigabyte K8N Pro (K8 Triton Series) with AMD 3200+ 1GB-RAM

chunderbunny · Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2004 1:58 pm Post subject:

Note that NForce 3 boards don't use the same sound chip as Nforce 2 boards, so you shouldn't follow any instructions relating to Nforce 2 boards if you want to get sound working. The sound chip on Nforce 3 boards is in fact a cheapo generic AC97 chip (well, usually) so you may even be better off with an old soundblaster instead.

chrroessner · Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2004 8:43 pm Post subject:

Do you think, I can add the pci card in addition to the existing card or is it better to deactivate the onboard sound stuff?

Or does it not matter?

chunderbunny · Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2004 9:02 pm Post subject:

You can use both, but it leads to a much more complicated configuration. Unless you actually plan on using both soundcards I would deactivate the onboard one first.

Before you do that though, try disabling ALSA in kernel and manually emerging all the alsa stuff (emerge alsa-driver, alsa-libs, alsa-oss) and see if that works.

chrroessner · Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2004 12:07 pm Post subject:

I read about the deactivation of ALSA in the kernel in gentoo-wiki ether. Why can I not use the kernel stuff? What is different to ALSA in alsa-driver and maybe kernel 2.6.9-rc3?

I already tested the manually usage of alsa-driver but I could not find differences.

Can you tell me why?

chunderbunny · Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2004 1:40 pm Post subject:

The kernel driver is always slightly behind the external ALSA modules since it has to go through an extra layer of checking. Sometimes the newer driver offered directly from the ALSA project will fix a problem.

chrroessner · Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2004 5:28 am Post subject:

Thank you. Yesterday I put my SoundBlaster in and configured it. Seems to work so far, but I do have one little last problem:

I use the spdif from the sb and I get no sound from my line-in port (TV). Is there some sound routing from line-in to spdif necessary? If yes, Do you have a sample config or a howto (docu) where I can find out more?

Thanks

chrroessner · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 5:24 am Post subject:

I found this link and it helped me very much. Maybe someone else likes it:

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=emu10k1

stig · Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 9:35 pm Post subject:

I'm using the SPDIF on the onboard sound chip on my nforce3 250 ultra thingy.
I disabled the arts sound server and created /etc/asound.conf. Into this I put: