ALSA vs. OSS vs. OSSFree 32
scenic writes "I was wondering what experience the /. community has had with ALSA vs the sound drivers that are part of the Kernel and the various other choices (such as the 4Front OSS packages). I've used the commercial OSS drivers as well as the "included" Linux drivers. I've started to look to ALSA for better sound response (for example, I've noticed with esd and the basic linux drivers, there is sometimes a lag when playing back video files through esd. I understand that esd is part of the issue, but it's sort of important to be able to multiplex sound). What have others' experiences been? What other solutions are there aside from things like esd?" Which sound systems do you find work for your system, and which don't? If specific hardware / software combinations can be endorsed or critiqued, it'll probably help a lot of people.
Read "Programming Linux Games"... (Score:5, Informative)
According to him OSS is a pretty entrenched technology, but ALSA's continuing to grow. The fact that ALSA's retaining nearly 100% compatibility with OSS probably means that at some point you'll be able to make a full shift from OSS to ALSA...
Don't know if that's helpful (or even relevent).
Okay, here's the funny thing! (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Okay, here's the funny thing! (Score:2)
(This bit here is to get around the stupid "postercomment compression filter" yet still post my insightful comment....)
Get a real sound card (Score:2, Insightful)
Vote for ALSA (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Vote for ALSA (Score:1)
Program using the OSS/Free API for now (Score:3, Informative)
Kind of like the jump from Win9x to Win2k, soundwise.
HTH,
Michel
Re:Program using the OSS/Free API for now (Score:1, Interesting)
Mandrake (Score:1)
You need the 0.9.0 betas (Score:1)
Michel
ALSA 0.9.0 betas are frustrating (Score:2, Informative)
I have tried to build several programs and libraries that have "native" ALSA support, and ALSA gets detected properly at configure-time. Then I proceed to make, and the build will die because the app only supports the 0.5.0 ALSA interface, and not 0.9.0. It is not really the fault of the ALSA drivers, the configure scripts (and ideally the software package itself) need updating to be aware of the newer ALSA interface.
I just feel like I am losing functionality when I have to reconfigure the software with "--disable-alsa" and let the OSS emulation layer get used. <sigh> I wish I had more time to hack on my favorite projects. ALSA 0.9 for everyone!
Re:ALSA 0.9.0 betas are frustrating (Score:1)
I believe some of Red Hat's beta testers who own SB Lives have been rather unhappy at the state of the emu10k driver in the latest kernels...
Ran into snags with programs' configure trying to enable ALSA support. Solution? Do not install the alsa libraries, just install the drivers. Works for me.
Regards,
Michel
Re:ALSA 0.9.0 betas are frustrating (Score:1)
Ran into snags with programs' configure trying to enable ALSA support. Solution? Do not install the alsa libraries, just install the drivers. Works for me.
Sounds like fun, one question: Are you able to multiplex connections using the oss-compatibility mode? Another Question: Will that work with all the drivers?
Cheers.
Re:ALSA 0.9.0 betas are frustrating (Score:1)
Answering the first question, yes it works in oss-compatibility mode. In fact I have not really tried its native mode - the hassle of there being almost no application that support it natively being the culprit, as well as having to recompile.
One would expect the soundservers (esd, arts) to be the first programs to support ALSA 0.9.0, but that would be defeating the purpose of doing multiplexing without a sound server, no?
As to the second question, I have tried it with the ymfpci driver. YMMV. But if they implement it like Win2k's sound drivers, which I have tested on the good ol' SB AWE64, it should work on most drivers.
Yours,
Michel
Re:ALSA 0.9.0 betas are frustrating (Score:1)
I tried compiling up the newest drivers, but I was unable to get it mutliplexing - don't know if I missed a switch somewhere though. Symptoms were while playing a Real stream, loading xmms and pressing play - the latter froze until Real was stopped, at which point it came back to life. Am I missing something?
This maybe because of my crappy Intellistaion onboard sound (i8x0 with ac97 codec)
Cheers.
Check configuration (Score:1)
It might be true that your sound chipset does not do multiplexing, I'm afraid this feature is not yet well documented; stumbled upon it by chance myself.
That's the only thing I could think of - but there are lots of cheap PCI soundcards out there :)
HTH,
Michel
What I want to know is... (Score:2)
Does anyone know if they exist and what card I should be purchasing?
(Please do not mention ESD, the Enlightened Sound Daemon. This is not a good solution. ESD built into the kernel would be.)
- A.P.
Re:What I want to know is... (Score:1)
I absolutely hate my Ensoniq AudioPCI (I think it's a Creative card too) that I have at work as it only supports one sound at a time - I'm stuck using esd there. But here at home, using the SBLive works great.
Re:What I want to know is... (Score:1)
Re:What I want to know is... (Score:3, Informative)
ymf724 pci based cards
ymf744 pci based cards, it's essentially a ymf724 but it has digital out, and 4 channel out
SB Live
Trident 4DWave
I own two ymf724's and a ymf744, great cards, they sound great, and they're cheap :) The ymf744and ymf724 have issues with quake3, it hangs on exit :( But you can just kill off the process luckily. This is with the latest .9.0beta7 drivers, the .5.x drivers don't have any noticeable issues though.
A quick search here's the cards: ymf744 [$18] [pccentury.com] and ymf744 pro version (digital out version?) [$25] [pccentury.com]
Re:What I want to know is... (Score:1)
I just picked up one of the $25 cards (on backorder) and, with any luck, my problem is solved.
Who says Ask Slashdot doesn't work?!
- A.P.
Re:What I want to know is... (Score:1)
Actually I've had problems with that--the system sounds always work, of course (except for those of us who've turned the damned things off), and you almost always get one other source working, but I haven't been able to, for example, run WinAmp and play a game. This might be because one or the other is using DirectX, but I'm pretty sure some of the combinations I've tried haven't used DirectSound.
So it's not perfect; hopefully ALSA will catch up soon and Linux will be ahead of Windows in this respect. Certainly Windows has a slight edge right now, tho.