Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 11:31:30 -0400 From: Jason Stewart <jstewart@rtl.org> To: Ross Lippert <ripper@eskimo.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: why does motherboard sound suck? Message-ID: <3F86D0D2.2030804@rtl.org> In-Reply-To: <20031009060552.A27500@eskimo.eskimo.com> References: <20031009060552.A27500@eskimo.eskimo.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Ross Lippert wrote: > I just got new hardware and I installed 5.1 on it (not tht it matters, > because what I am asking about is observed in 4.X). > > Why is it that so-called the built-in soundcard that my motherboard > comes with does work with everything? > > By that I mean that I can play the usual multimedia stuff without > a hitch, xmms, mpg123, mplayer, artsd all work just fine. The card comes > up as some AC97 under pcm. > > But if I try to use some of the more esoteric ports like stella > or festival, I get no sound. With festival I can do a trick like > filter the output through the command > 'sox -r 1600 -t sw $FILE -r 4800 -t ossdsp /dev/dsp' > because it provides hooks to do this, but I don't see why I have to > (btw the port can't build festival on 5.1 yet, but you can on 4.X, > and I am working on patching it for 5.1). > > stella, the atari emulator, has the same trouble. > > I have observed this on another motherboard with a so-called built-in > soundcard as well (mpg123 plays, sox plays, stella doesn't) about > 2 years ago (problem solved by buying a SB16 for it). > > The solution has, in the past, been to just keep using an old > soundblaster card and disabling motherboard sound in favor of the > SB card. But I am tired of using up a PCI slot just to keep a > handful of my favorite ports running. > > I've looked at the sources to festival (and a bit at stella, though > I do not understand them as well), specicially the voxware.cc file > which seems to talk directly to /dev/dsp. It doesn't seem to do > anything fancy, just sets the same rate and copies an array of > sound bytes to a FILE*. > > So I ask, where does the fault lie? Is stella/festival soundblaster centric, > and just won't talk to AC97 cards? Is my motherboard AC97 deficient? > And why are motherboard cards deficient? Should I focus my energy > on my hardware (replace card)? My OS (debug AC97 driver or find a sox-like > workaround for stella)? Or my apps (debug stella and festival)? > > I'll bet there are other ports that I don't use that have this same > trouble. > > -r > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" > I don't think the problem lies in your built in sound card. Maybe arts is giving you trouble. Read common problems under http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/sound-setup.html See also the arts FAQ: http://www.arts-project.org/doc/mcop-doc/artsd-faq.html Jason
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3F86D0D2.2030804>