Re: Sound is slow?

[Stuart Prescott <debian@nanonanonano.net>]

Hi Ben,

I can't help you with your OSS question, but I have a similar sound card

> 0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 
> Audio Controller (rev 02)

0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM
(ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)

and it works quite nicely with ALSA (I believe that the AC'97 codec is
all that is needed...)


# lsmod | grep snd
snd_intel8x0m          18888  0
snd_intel8x0           34216  2
snd_ac97_codec         73360  2 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0
snd_pcm_oss            54120  0
snd_mixer_oss          20352  2 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                98888  3 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer              25860  1 snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc         10056  3 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
snd_mpu401_uart         7936  1 snd_intel8x0
snd_rawmidi            24932  1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_device          8072  1 snd_rawmidi
snd                    57508  12
snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device
soundcore              10272  2 snd


make sure you remove all the OSS modules before seeing if alsa can find
the card. In fact, if you install hotplug, then it will find the card
and load the alsa drivers for it (nice :) But you may want to use
alsaconf to play with it too...


One trap I did find on my laptop (HP/Compaq nx7010) was that I had to
*mute* the channel "External Amplifier Power Down" to get sound out of
it. Bizarre. For a while I thought alsa was fscked and was contemplating
going back to OSS too...

Try monkeying with things from the console (without having any arts/esd
weirdness going on) using amizer or alsamixer to change the levels and
aplay to play a simple wav file. I have mapped my laptop's "mute" button
to run the command:

	amixer cset numid 32 0

which mutes the sound card *and* turns on the little mute light on the
keyboard. (all this is done using "hotkeys").

More details (including hotkeys config files) on my website.... perhaps
that will help you get alsa working and that might just get around your
problem rather than actually fixing OSS.

	http://www.nanonanonano.net/linux/nx7010#audio

regards
Stuart