[SLUG] Creative Soundblaster USB and Linux
Hi, I recently bought a Creative Soundblaster USB sound adapter, for recording on my laptop (the inbuilt sound card doesn't bring the line inputs out to a connector, so it's useless for recording). Alsa recognises the device, but alsamixer shows several channels that only half make sense to me. There are two pairs of RCA connectors labelled line in and line out; and a headphone jack with a volume control. Plugging anythinginto the headphone jack seems to mute the line output. Muting either `speaker' control from alsamixer also appears to mute the line output. Also it's as if the speaker volume controls are in series for line-in. But for PCM output, speaker 1 affects output levels, but not speaker 0. When a signal is going into `line in' it appears always to be echoed to `line out' regardless of any settings other than the speaker levels. Can anyone (perhaps who has used this device under Windows) explain the controls to me? Simple mixer control 'PCM',0 Capabilities: cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Capture 0 - 128 Front Left: Capture 24 [19%] [off] Front Right: Capture 24 [19%] [off] Simple mixer control 'PCM Capture Source',0 Capabilities: Mono: Simple mixer control 'PCM',1 Capabilities: cswitch cswitch-joined Capture channels: Mono Mono: Capture [off] Simple mixer control 'Mic',0 Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined cvolume pswitch pswitch-joined cswitch cswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Capture channels: Mono Limits: Playback 0 - 255 Capture 0 - 128 Mono: Playback 0 [0%] [off] Capture 0 [0%] [on] Simple mixer control 'Auto Gain Control',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Mono: Playback [off] Simple mixer control 'Speaker',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 255 Front Left: Playback 196 [77%] [on] Front Right: Playback 196 [77%] [on] Simple mixer control 'Speaker',1 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 255 Front Left: Playback 190 [75%] [on] Front Right: Playback 190 [75%] [on] -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Creative Soundblaster USB and Linux
Yeah I remember looking this thing up on google, and the USB Sound Blaster thing is listed as having poor support and being flaky at best in Linux. Even if you do get it to work, the levels are horrible and the sound quality is the same. I talked to a guy who tried everything to get his USB Sound Blaster box going even recompiled the kernel wrote a custom modprobe script hacked hotplug and it was still horrible (but it worked). On Mon, 2005-03-21 at 21:01, Peter Chubb wrote: Hi, I recently bought a Creative Soundblaster USB sound adapter, for recording on my laptop (the inbuilt sound card doesn't bring the line inputs out to a connector, so it's useless for recording). Regards Richard Neal Kryten Cat: "Hey, I got it! We laser our way through!?" Kryten: "Ah, an excellent suggestion, Sir, with just two minor drawbacks. One, we don't have a power source for the lasers, and two, we don't have any lasers." - Cat and Kryten, White Hole ( Red Dwarf ) signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Creative Soundblaster USB and Linux
> "Richard" == Richard Neal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Richard> Yeah I remember looking this thing up on google, and the USB Richard> Sound Blaster thing is listed as having poor support and Richard> being flaky at best in Linux. Even if you do get it to work, Richard> the levels are horrible and the sound quality is the same. Well it works an awful lot better than the internal card. I can actually record CD-quality sound, and it seems OK, providing I select PCM1 as the input and adjust the levels appropriately. It seems to want much higher levels, rather than the standard 600mV into 600ohms I'm used to, but it does work, has a reasonable noise floor, and the A-->D converter seems reasonably linear --- good enough for my purposes. Unfortunately it doesn't have an external power supply, and filtering on the USB power supply is not quite adequate. It's OK when I'm on battery, but noisy if the laptop is plugged into the mains. And the documentation is not on the hardware, but on the windows+hardware combination, and it's useless to me. -- Dr Peter Chubb http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au peterc AT gelato.unsw.edu.au The technical we do immediately, the political takes *forever* -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
