From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Dec 29 11:45:05 1996 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id LAA09491 for questions-outgoing; Sun, 29 Dec 1996 11:45:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from user.netwalk.com (dh2@user.netwalk.com [205.156.197.170]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id LAA09486 for ; Sun, 29 Dec 1996 11:45:02 -0800 (PST) Received: (from dh2@localhost) by user.netwalk.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) id OAA09672; Sun, 29 Dec 1996 14:46:48 -0500 Message-ID: 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 References: <199612281343.IAA22106@netcom23.netcom.com> X-Mailer: Mutt 0.55 Mime-Version: 1.0 Reply-To: rhh@ct.picker.com In-Reply-To: ; from Snob Art Genre on Dec 28, 1996 19:45:01 -0500 Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk 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