Re: if I were a newbie how would I get sound?

[Arthur Marsh <arthur.marsh@internode.on.net>]

Chris Lale wrote, On 20/12/06 21:27:
> Felipe Sateler wrote:
> > [...]
> > The main problem seems to be lack of documentation. There are docs 
> > floating around,
> > but they only cover the basic aspects, and only on the simplest of
> > configurations.
> >
> >   
>
> I have put some of the suggestions from this thread on the NewbieDOC 
> wiki: http://newbiedoc.berlios.de/wiki/Sound_in_Debian_GNU/Linux.  If 
> anyone has any pearls of wisdom, please spare a moment or two and add 
> them to the page.

Feel free to add this to the wiki, but I'm posting here as Google seems 
to be very good at finding Debian mailing list postings.

For AWE32/64 and EMU10K1 based sound cards (e.g. SoundBlaster Live! that 
requires loading of sound fonts for the hardware synth to play MIDI), 
the package:

awesfx

contains programs to load sound fonts.

I wrote a script /etc/init.d/soundfont to load the soundfont on my SB 
Live! 5.1 model SB 0220:

#!/bin/sh
set -e

# Exit if soundfonts not present
[ -f /usr/share/sounds/sf2/8mbgmsfx.sf2 ] || exit 0

MYNAME=/etc/init.d/soundfont
PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin

case "$1" in
  start)
        EXITSTATUS=0
        echo -n "loading soundfonts"
        asfxload /usr/share/sounds/sf2/8mbgmsfx.sf2
        echo .
        exit $EXITSTATUS
        ;;
  stop)
        ;;
  *)
        echo "Usage: $MYNAME {start|stop}" >&2
        exit 3
        ;;
esac

then added a symbolic link:

/etc/rcS.d/S51soundfont -> ../init.d/soundfont

so that the sound font is loaded at start-up.

As I picked up the card secondhand without soundfonts, I had to google 
for the file name 8mbgmsfx.sf2 and place it in /usr/share/sounds/sf2 - 
alternatively I could have purchased a driver CD from the Australian 
office of Creative Labs.