progress report - alsa+sblive

[Kerry Hoath]

It is important to realise that the ac97 mixers don't behave as you think they
do. Also the sound blaster live is only designed to give line-level output so
if your speakers aren't amplified you might run into greif. In contrast, the
sb16 had an amplified out so that meant your speakers did not require batteries
etc. The modern soundcards only produce line level output normally so you need
to amplify it.

Also remember; other drivers/mixers are often inferior; not letting you
unleesh the full power of the soundcard. The alsa mixer is necessarily
complicated to let you tweak every feature on the card, oss/free mixers
aren't that clever or full featured. That said, you might live your life
not needing the funky features; I personally preferr to have 100 knobs to twiddle
even if I don't fully understand them.
Good luck with the sblive; I am considering buying one soon.

Regards, Kerry.
On Sat, Oct 14, 2000 at 07:52:32AM -0400, Charles Hallenbeck wrote:
> Thanks to Jacob, Bill, Vic and others for your help... I have persisted
> with the alsa drivers and have the card working now, but I am not that
> happy with it and may try some of the other drivers you have
> suggested. While it works, it seems totally unresponsive to most of the
> options in 'amixer' although the program seems to accept my commands - no
> errors shown, and 'alsactl' seems to store and restore them okay. BTW -
> Bill - I was unable to use the asound.conf you sent because it specified a
> difference chip for the mixer. I created a new asound.conf with alsactl
> and then adjusted its settings for all those features I recognized. I left
> 'video' 'phone' and 'PC speaker' alone. But I get just barely audible
> sound despite all the gain settings - even setting 'Master' to 0 fails to
> mute the card, and setting it to max does not increase it. 
> 
> I will play a little more before abandoning aLSA WITH THIS CARD. oH WELL -
> BETTER THAN NOTHING, ALTHOUGH MY OLD SYSTEM SURE WAS A WINNER IN
> COMPARISON!
> 
> cHUCK.
> 
> 
> My web site is http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh 
> Back when I was a boy it was 40 miles toeverywhere,
> uphill both ways, and it was always snowing!
> 
> 
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-- 
--
Kerry Hoath: kerry at gotss.eu.org
Alternates: kerry at emusys.com.au kerry at gotss.spice.net.au or khoath at lis.net.au
ICQ UIN: 62823451