Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2002 04:35:10 +0000 From: Andrew Boothman <andrew@cream.org> To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@monkeys.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Novice question about testing sound cards Message-ID: <3DC5F8FE.5070106@cream.org> References: <97247.1036359573@monkeys.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
> The card is now clearly recognized on boot up, however I'm still not
> 100% that it's working. I tried using a couple of CD player utilities
> and no sound came out if the speakers.
The card will only act as a CD-player if it is directly connected to the
CD-player by a seperate cable, you mention below that you haven't
got one. (I'm sure your local computer shop could supply you with one
for almost nothing).
> 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.
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).
You also might want to check that your speakers actually work by
connecting them up to your hi-fi or something. I've lost count of the
number of times I've spent hours trying to find a fault in completely
the *wrong* piece of hardware. :-)
Best of luck.
Andrew.
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3DC5F8FE.5070106>