I just recently decided to get an SB Live card. I'm starting to
understand a lot of the complaining I've seen about using this card
under Linux. With many of these problems I'm not sure if its a fault of
the card or of the ALSA drivers, so keep that in mind. I really just
want to get this thing working and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of
my problems are because I don't know how to use things properly.
I'm using the latest CVS as of yesterday.
1. Crazy mixer controls
Is there some documentation on the SB Live mixer that would be helpful
to me?
Once I realized that I had my speakers plugged into the rear channels
(read the manual!) the mixer started to make a little more sense. Its
still rather complicated though and a lot of the controls don't do what
I would expect.
"Master" seems to control only the front speakers, "PCM" controls both
PCM audio and Wavetable synth output, "Wave" seems more like what PCM
should do (output level of PCM audio).
Can't seem to get enough volume out of my card, especially for the
EMU10k wavetable synth. I am using amplified speakers, perhaps this is
just a problem with the card itself, disappointing though. I have my
"Music" control maxed and I can max the "Master" and get half way decent
volume out of the synth. Increasing many of the audio controls results
in distortion in the bass sounds even the sound still isn't that loud
for the speakers.
Whats with the load of "PCM Send" and "PCM Send Routing" controls for? I
take it these are for each of the output PCM channels. It doesn't seem
like they should be in the alsamixer though. At least not the Routing
ones.
How can I be sure all these controls are in a sane state? Seems like
some inovation is required to make the mixer easier to use for all these
controls.
2. Recording not working
When I record, I get complete 0'd data. I've tried several recording
inputs (Line, Mic, etc) all produce 0 data.
3. Reverb and Chorus don't work with sound fonts
I'm sure this was working not too long ago. At least I remember it
working on a machine we had at the LinuxTag.
If anyone has any tips, reports on your own experiences with this card,
etc, I would really like to hear it. So far its been a bit frustrating.
I'm looking forward to testing full duplex, but since recording isn't
working for me.. Looking forward to fixing these problems (or fixing me
as the case may be). Perhaps an ALSA SB Live! FAQ is in order? Just one
of those interactive things that people can add their own experience to.
Maybe for ALSA in general something like that would be cool.
Cheers
--
Josh Green
Smurf Sound Font Editor (http://smurf.sourceforge.net)
_______________________________________________
Alsa-devel mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-devel
