From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Nov 4 1:39:34 2002 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 54A9F37B401 for ; Mon, 4 Nov 2002 01:39:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from segfault.monkeys.com (segfault.monkeys.com [66.60.157.246]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AB6B143E3B for ; Mon, 4 Nov 2002 01:39:32 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from rfg@monkeys.com) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by segfault.monkeys.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id EC6B5648C; Mon, 4 Nov 2002 01:39:21 -0800 (PST) To: Andrew Boothman Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Novice question about testing sound cards In-reply-to: Your message of Mon, 04 Nov 2002 04:35:10 +0000. <3DC5F8FE.5070106@cream.org> Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2002 01:39:21 -0800 Message-ID: <31290.1036402761@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In message <3DC5F8FE.5070106@cream.org>, you wrote: >Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: >> Ok, so question: What's the simplest and easiest way to simply check >> to see if a given sound card is working or not? >> >> I gather that it is _not_ as simple as just cat'ing some .mp3 file to >> one of the /dev/dsp* device files, correct? > >Nope. The DSP devices don't understand mp3, you need an mp3 decoder to >do that but there are command-line (non-X) tools that play mp3s - check >out audio/mpg123 (or something like that). > >Also, try doing 'cat /dev/sndstat' to make sure that pcm really does >understand your card. OK, did that, and I get: FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm) Installed Devices: pcm0: at io 0x220 irq 5 drq 1:5 bufsz 4096d (1p/1r/0v channels duplex) Does that all seem OK? >I'm not totally sure about this, but I think that you can dump audio >file in the 'au' format directly to devices. A test au format file can >be found on http://www.cti.ecp.fr/documents/a_sound.au (This was linked >to from http://www.cti.ecp.fr/documents/tests/au.html which you might >also find useful). OK, I'm willing to give that a try, but what device should I can the .au file to? Do I cat to /dev/dsp0 ? >You also might want to check that your speakers actually work by >connecting them up to your hi-fi or something. I'm sure that they work. They were working not that long ago, and have just been sitting here on a shelf next to my desk since then. The only thing that has changed is that they have aquired more dust in the interval since they were last used. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message