Date: Sun, 29 Dec 1996 14:46:47 -0500 From: dh2@netwalk.com (Randall Hopper) To: stanb@netcom.com (Stan Brown) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sound card recomendations for FreeBSD Message-ID: <Mutt.19961229144647.dh2@user.netwalk.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.961228194429.1227A-100000@echonyc.com>; from Snob Art Genre on Dec 28, 1996 19:45:01 -0500 References: <199612281343.IAA22106@netcom23.netcom.com> <Pine.SOL.3.91.961228194429.1227A-100000@echonyc.com>
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Snob Art Genre:
|On Sat, 28 Dec 1996, Stan Brown wrote:
|> I plan on buying a sound card for my FreebSD machine in the near
|> future. Anyone got any recomendations on whats well supported/works
|> well?
|
|My SB AWE32 card has never given me trouble.
I'll second that one. I have a Sound Blaster 32 non-PnP and it works
very well for me, in all OSs.
If you want good all-around sound support in all operating systems,
IMO you can't do better than a Creative Labs Sound Blaster 32 or AWE32.
Full SB32/AWE32, Sound Blaster 16, and Sound Blaster compatibility.
Virtually any OS driver or DOS program that has any level of sound support
at all (above PC speaker, that is :-) supports at least one of these
feature sets.
The only case I think you might be tempted toward another sound card
might be if you want to give up generally good all-around support in favor
of full duplex audio under FreeBSD specifically (for MBone, Internet Voice,
etc.). As of yet, the FreeBSD soundblaster sound drivers don't support
full-duplex PCM. The GUS sound driver does (other cards may as well).
URLs you might be interested in surfing:
http://www.edu.isy.liu.se/~d93jesno/awe32.html
http://www.compart.fi/~mhjelt/awe/
In particular check out the "Information About the AWE32 Soundcard Family"
link on the first URL. Personally, I've got a SB32 non-PnP. It's got the
somewhat quieter Vibra chipset (still fully SB16 compatible), and I've
slapped a couple cheap 1Meg SIMMs on it. 4X the default mem of a std AWE32
for less money, and full AWE32/SB16/SB compatibility
BTW, FreeBSD 2.2 and 3.0-current have support for the EMU8K Wavetable
chipset on the AWE32/SB32 which gets you great sounding MIDIs/MODs/etc.
The Sound Blaster 16 and other drivers support the SB16 side of the card
for PCM/etc.
Whatever sound card you decide upon, you might want to look at a
non-PnP version. I think the GUS is the only card that has Plug-and-Pray
support in FreeBSD now. From what I've heard, PnP cards can be a real pain
to get working (with PnP support in the OS or not).
For further questions, you might follow-up with multimedia@freebsd.org.
You'll probably get better response there.
Randall Hopper
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