alsa question

[Justin Ekis]

Hi all,

Well, I've finally done it, I'm running Linux. Install  was much 
easier than I expected.
Thanks to everyone who tried helping me to get my braille lite m20 to 
work with speakup a couple years ago. Turns out all I needed was a real 
synth and this doubletalk does the trick.

Anyway, I've got a question about alsa.
I have  a via8233 onboard sound card and am running alsa 0.9.0rc8d.
By the way, I think I remember someone here saying they had this same 
card and was getting several errors. I had the same problem with rc6 but 
apparently it was fixed in 7 or 8 because the modules compiled and 
loaded fine this time.

Anyway, could someone please explain how to use one of the mixer control 
programs? I have a basic understanding of alsamixer but can't seem to 
get it set right. With most things I try to play, there is a great deal 
of static interference. With some it's just enough to be quite 
annoying, other times you can barely hear the sound over all the static.
While some of the channel names like mic and CD are obvious, I have no 
clue about many of the others or how they should be set.
Could the cause of the problem be bad mixer settings, or am I totally on 
the wrong track?

Thanks.

Justin Ekis