Re: SoundBlaster Live!, /dev/audio, and bad sound quality
> In general, everything works fine, except that sending .au files to > /dev/audio has really lousy sound quality. You can hear the sound, but > there's a loud hissing or static sound on top of it. I had this I have been having the same problem and have lived with it for a few monthes. The main thing that didn't work for me was "saytime", and that kind of bothered me because on my previous computer I put saytime on an hourly cron job so I don't loose track of time :-) Reading this thread finally pushed me to find a workaround for saytime, and I will be glad to share it with any other emu10k users who might want it. Basically I edited the source code to dump it through sox with "play -t ul -r 8000 file.au". Not pretty but it works. Email me directly if you want it. -- Thank you, Joe Bouchard Powered by Debian GNU/Linux
Re: SoundBlaster Live!, /dev/audio, and bad sound quality
Lo, on Sunday, March 3, Rick Macdonald did write: > On Sun, 3 Mar 2002, Richard Cobbe wrote: > > > Greetings, all. > > > > New sound card (actually, new computer). It's a SoundBlaster Live!, so > > I've compiled in support for the emu10k1 module. > > > > Up-to-date potato, kernel 2.2.20, SMP. > > > > In general, everything works fine, except that sending .au files to > > /dev/audio has really lousy sound quality. You can hear the sound, but > > there's a loud hissing or static sound on top of it. > I wonder if it's meant to work. "cat english.au > /dev/audio" on my system > also sounds horrible, but the same file sounds fine when played with > xanim, esdplay or "play". I actually don't know where "play" came from. > "bplay", from the bplay package, sounds horrible just like cat does. You're apparently right -- play works quite nicely on the same file. I'd be interested in learning the differences between play and catting to /dev/audio, but I'm not going to worry about it too much. I have a quick way of playing .au files, and that's really all I'm after. > I think cat'ing the file _used_ to sound OK on the old sound card (SB16) > that I had before the the SBLive. Yeah, the same file sounded good on the sound hardware in the previous machine. I'm a little unclear on details, but I think it was a cheap SB16 knockoff. (Exact modules info elsewhere in the thread.) Thanks for the advice, Richard
Re: SoundBlaster Live!, /dev/audio, and bad sound quality
Lo, on Monday, March 4, dave mallery did write: > On Sun, 3 Mar 2002, Richard Cobbe wrote: > > > Greetings, all. > > > > New sound card (actually, new computer). It's a SoundBlaster Live!, so > > I've compiled in support for the emu10k1 module. > > > > Up-to-date potato, kernel 2.2.20, SMP. > > > > In general, everything works fine, except that sending .au files to > > /dev/audio has really lousy sound quality. You can hear the sound, but > > there's a loud hissing or static sound on top of it. I had this > > behavior both with emu10k1 v0.7 included with the 2.2.20 source, and > > emu10k1 v0.18 that I just downloaded from SourceForge. I tried playing > > with various mixer settings, but that didn't help. The only way I could > > get rid of the hissing was by turning the volume all the way down. > > did you mute all the other inputs on the mixer? Just tried it. No luck. As I remarked elsewhere in the thread, though, play(1) from the sox package works quite nicely. Richard
Re: SoundBlaster Live!, /dev/audio, and bad sound quality
Lo, on Monday, March 4, Dave Sherohman did write: > On Sun, Mar 03, 2002 at 01:22:38PM -0600, Richard Cobbe wrote: > > In general, everything works fine, except that sending .au files to > > /dev/audio has really lousy sound quality. You can hear the sound, but > > there's a loud hissing or static sound on top of it. > > I'd guess it's either that the .au is 8-bit and /dev/audio is > expecting 16-bit data or the .au contains signed data and /dev/audio > is expecting unsigned (or vice-versa). Possible, but I'd be surprised. The same sound file worked just fine on my old computer. Don't remember exactly what kind of sound hardware, but the following are the relevant module configuration lines: alias sound opl3sa2 #pre-install sound /sbin/insmod sound dmabuf=1 alias midi opl3 options opl3 io=0x388 options opl3sa2 mss_io=0x530 irq=5 dma=0 dma2=1 mpu_io=0x388 io=0x370 alias synth0 off Out of curiosity, is there any way to convert between 8- and 16-bit .au, or between signed and unsigned? A cursory glance at the sox manpage doesn't seem to indicate that these operations are supported. In any case, using play (from sox) to play the .au file works just fine. Richard
Re: SoundBlaster Live!, /dev/audio, and bad sound quality
On Sun, Mar 03, 2002 at 01:22:38PM -0600, Richard Cobbe wrote: > In general, everything works fine, except that sending .au files to > /dev/audio has really lousy sound quality. You can hear the sound, but > there's a loud hissing or static sound on top of it. I'd guess it's either that the .au is 8-bit and /dev/audio is expecting 16-bit data or the .au contains signed data and /dev/audio is expecting unsigned (or vice-versa). -- When we reduce our own liberties to stop terrorism, the terrorists have already won. - reverius Innocence is no protection when governments go bad. - Tom Swiss
Re: SoundBlaster Live!, /dev/audio, and bad sound quality
On Sun, 3 Mar 2002, Richard Cobbe wrote: > Greetings, all. > > New sound card (actually, new computer). It's a SoundBlaster Live!, so > I've compiled in support for the emu10k1 module. > > Up-to-date potato, kernel 2.2.20, SMP. > > In general, everything works fine, except that sending .au files to > /dev/audio has really lousy sound quality. You can hear the sound, but > there's a loud hissing or static sound on top of it. I had this > behavior both with emu10k1 v0.7 included with the 2.2.20 source, and > emu10k1 v0.18 that I just downloaded from SourceForge. I tried playing > with various mixer settings, but that didn't help. The only way I could > get rid of the hissing was by turning the volume all the way down. did you mute all the other inputs on the mixer? > Any suggestions would be appreciated, > > Richard > > > -- Dave Mallery, K5EN (2.2r5 potato) PO Box 520 Ramah, NM 87321 no gates .~. no windows... /V\ /( )\ running Debian GNU/Linux ^^-^^ free at last! Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds
Re: SoundBlaster Live!, /dev/audio, and bad sound quality
> also sounds horrible, but the same file sounds fine when played with > xanim, esdplay or "play". I actually don't know where "play" came from. IIRC from 'sox' package. -- Alexey "Python is executable pseudocode, Perl is executable line-noise."
Re: SoundBlaster Live!, /dev/audio, and bad sound quality
On Sun, 3 Mar 2002, Richard Cobbe wrote: > Greetings, all. > > New sound card (actually, new computer). It's a SoundBlaster Live!, so > I've compiled in support for the emu10k1 module. > > Up-to-date potato, kernel 2.2.20, SMP. > > In general, everything works fine, except that sending .au files to > /dev/audio has really lousy sound quality. You can hear the sound, but > there's a loud hissing or static sound on top of it. I had this > behavior both with emu10k1 v0.7 included with the 2.2.20 source, and > emu10k1 v0.18 that I just downloaded from SourceForge. I tried playing > with various mixer settings, but that didn't help. The only way I could > get rid of the hissing was by turning the volume all the way down. > > Other sound operations, like playing MP3s or WAVs in xmms, work fine; no > hissing or static at all. (I only tried this with v0.18 of the driver, > though.) > > I don't know that many things use /dev/audio any more, so this isn't > that big a deal, but I'd like to get this working---especially because I > typically use english.au from www.kernel.org to test the sound system > after I change things. Nice, easy, and short. I wonder if it's meant to work. "cat english.au > /dev/audio" on my system also sounds horrible, but the same file sounds fine when played with xanim, esdplay or "play". I actually don't know where "play" came from. "bplay", from the bplay package, sounds horrible just like cat does. I think cat'ing the file _used_ to sound OK on the old sound card (SB16) that I had before the the SBLive. ...RickM...
