From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Oct 10 08:40:30 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6661B16A4BF for ; Fri, 10 Oct 2003 08:40:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from webserver2.rtl.org (rtl-3.i2k.com [63.94.12.207]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B7BCF43F93 for ; Fri, 10 Oct 2003 08:40:28 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jstewart@rtl.org) Received: from rtl.org (rtl-2.i2k.com [63.94.12.206]) by webserver2.rtl.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h9AFWuT24384; Fri, 10 Oct 2003 11:32:56 -0400 Message-ID: <3F86D0D2.2030804@rtl.org> Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 11:31:30 -0400 From: Jason Stewart User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030701 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ross Lippert References: <20031009060552.A27500@eskimo.eskimo.com> In-Reply-To: <20031009060552.A27500@eskimo.eskimo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: why does motherboard sound suck? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 15:40:30 -0000 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