sound advice needed

sound advice needed

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

Hi gang -

I am upgrading a system to Linux here, and have a chance to add an AWE/64
sound card. Should I do that? My own system has a very old SB16 which
works like a charm,  but this newer card may or may be as easy to tame. I
am sure some of you folks have experience with newer cards and can tell me
either to "go for it" or "stay away from it". I would like to install the
alsa drivers and get speakfreely running on the new machine. Will I be
able to?

Chuck.


My web site is http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh (I C Q = 67363342)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.

Re: sound advice needed

[Kirk Reiser]

Hi Chuck:  The awe-64 is fine.  If it is an isa device you will need
to use isapnp to set the ports where you want them to live and then
tell alsa in your modules.conf.  If it is a pci device then you won't
need the isapnp stuff but you'll still need to set things other than
the snd_port and stuff in the options line of your modules.conf.  I
can tell you more once I know what type of interface it is.  It
doesn't really give you that much of an advantage over the sb16
though.

  Kirk

-- 

Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061

Re: sound advice needed

[Jacob Schmude]

Hang on, I thought alsa had isapnp support. In fact, that was one of the
main reasons I started using ALSA, those darn isapnp tools were to hard
to configure. You configure alsa at compile-time like this:
./configure --with-isapnp=yes

You then have a module called "isapnp.o" which will detect your pnp card.


On 29 Mar 2000, Kirk Reiser wrote:

> Hi Chuck:  The awe-64 is fine.  If it is an isa device you will need
> to use isapnp to set the ports where you want them to live and then
> tell alsa in your modules.conf.  If it is a pci device then you won't
> need the isapnp stuff but you'll still need to set things other than
> the snd_port and stuff in the options line of your modules.conf.  I
> can tell you more once I know what type of interface it is.  It
> doesn't really give you that much of an advantage over the sb16
> though.
> 
>   Kirk
> 
> -- 
> 
> Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
> e-mail: kirk@braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
> phone: (519) 661-3061
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 
> 

Re: sound advice needed

[Kerry Hoath]

The AWE 64 cards work under linux; you just have to run
pnpdump >/etc/isapnp.conf
then edit that file uncommenting the config required as stated in the file.
Then either run isapnp /etc/isapnp.conf
or reboot most distributions run isapnp at boot before modules are loaded.

Regards, Kerry.
On Wed, Mar 29, 2000 at 03:17:54PM -0500, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote:
> Hi gang -
> 
> I am upgrading a system to Linux here, and have a chance to add an AWE/64
> sound card. Should I do that? My own system has a very old SB16 which
> works like a charm,  but this newer card may or may be as easy to tame. I
> am sure some of you folks have experience with newer cards and can tell me
> either to "go for it" or "stay away from it". I would like to install the
> alsa drivers and get speakfreely running on the new machine. Will I be
> able to?
> 
> Chuck.
> 
> 
> My web site is http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh (I C Q = 67363342)
> "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
> safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

-- 
--
Kerry Hoath: kerry@gotss.eu.org
Alternates: kerry@emusys.com.au kerry@gotss.spice.net.au or khoath@lis.net.au
ICQ UIN: 8226547

Re: sound advice needed

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

Kirk and Kerry -

Thanks. It will be another week or ten days before I have it to play with,
so I will give it a shot then. I am replacing an 810MB hard drive on my
own system with an 8G drive at the same time. 

Chuck.


My web site is http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh (I C Q = 67363342)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.

Re: sound advice needed

[Terry D. Cudney]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1241 bytes --]

Hi Chuck, et al,

    I have an AWE 64 running here with the alsa driver and speak freely. It
works quite nicely for me. Just follow the alsa compile/intall directions and
it all works well.

    I had a bit of a problem with the script to start speak freely connecting
to Kirk's reflector, but Bill Acker helped me with that and all's well.
(Thanks Bill!)

Chuck Hallenbeck wrote:

> Hi gang -
>
> I am upgrading a system to Linux here, and have a chance to add an AWE/64
> sound card. Should I do that? My own system has a very old SB16 which
> works like a charm,  but this newer card may or may be as easy to tame. I
> am sure some of you folks have experience with newer cards and can tell me
> either to "go for it" or "stay away from it". I would like to install the
> alsa drivers and get speakfreely running on the new machine. Will I be
> able to?
>
> Chuck.
>
> My web site is http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh (I C Q = 67363342)
> "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
> safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

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Re: sound advice needed

[cpt.kirk]

Chuck,

I would not go with a AWE64 card. While the card is good, there are some
caveats. First is that there are two versions of this card using different
chip sets. Only one of those sets works with Linux. But also, the card is
about the last of the line that doesn't support multiple audio streams
simultaneously. For less money you can get a PCI card that will support
multiple streams. As an example I have an Aureal card that is available
for $17. It supports several audio streams at the same time (allows a wave
file to play while say Real Audio is playing). There are also drivers
available.

Right now the drivers aren't open source, but the company has pledged to
release them to open source in the future. There are other cards as well.
The one mentioned is just one that I know about and sounds good to me.

Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
------------------

Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).

Re: sound advice needed

[kestrell]

Hi listers

I'm shopping around for a new soundcard and was interested in learning
more about multiple audio streams. This is the first time I ran across the
phrase but am glad I now have a name for the thing that has been
frustrating me. Apologies for clogging up the list with what is probably a
simplistic concept for most listers, but this is my only source of info on
the subject, any pointers to more info on the net or books etc in
accessible media would be much appreciated, most of all which soundcards
provide for this.

Thanks.

Yours,
kestrell




"...it is only with the heart that one can see rightly. 
What is essential is invisible to the eye." 

~Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

Re: sound advice needed

[cpt.kirk]

As for which cards support multiple audio streams, look in the PCI cards.
Part of the reason is that ISA does not offer the bandwidth needed to get
the job done. There has been limited success in implimenting this on ISA,
but not a lot.

I would just look at the specs of the card. Things to look for in a card
today are:
PCI bus (The latest standards call for no ISA bus to be present.)
3d audio support
multiple audio streams
Linux drivers available.

Again, look at the cards available and then look to see which you are
looking at have Linux support. The AWE64 is quite popular. But there are
two chipsets in use, and only one is supported in Linux. Buddy found this
out the hard way.

Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
------------------

Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).

Re: sound advice needed

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

Hi Captain Kirk!

Thanks for those tips. I don't think I can manage it with a "PCI-only"
system because I need to use the Doubletalk card. The machine we are
talking about is a mixed architecture. The chip set thing is important
though. Can you (or Buddy maybe) tell me more about that? What are the two
chip sets called and which is which?

Tha;nks -- Chuck.

 On Thu, 30 Mar 2000
cpt.kirk@1tree.net wrote:

> As for which cards support multiple audio streams, look in the PCI cards.
> Part of the reason is that ISA does not offer the bandwidth needed to get
> the job done. There has been limited success in implimenting this on ISA,
> but not a lot.
> 
> I would just look at the specs of the card. Things to look for in a card
> today are:
> PCI bus (The latest standards call for no ISA bus to be present.)
> 3d audio support
> multiple audio streams
> Linux drivers available.
> 
> Again, look at the cards available and then look to see which you are
> looking at have Linux support. The AWE64 is quite popular. But there are
> two chipsets in use, and only one is supported in Linux. Buddy found this
> out the hard way.
> 
> Kirk Wood
> Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
> ------------------
> 
> Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

My web site is http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh (I C Q = 67363342)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.

Re: sound advice needed

[Victor Tsaran]

>From what I know AWE64 works with Linux with no problems. I am not sure
about the MIDI part though. You can look up ALSA's specifications for the
AWE64 drivers.

Regards,
Vic

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Hallenbeck" <chuckh@mhonline.net>
To: "Speakup Distribution List" <speakup@speech.braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2000 12:17 PM
Subject: sound advice needed


> Hi gang -
>
> I am upgrading a system to Linux here, and have a chance to add an AWE/64
> sound card. Should I do that? My own system has a very old SB16 which
> works like a charm,  but this newer card may or may be as easy to tame. I
> am sure some of you folks have experience with newer cards and can tell me
> either to "go for it" or "stay away from it". I would like to install the
> alsa drivers and get speakfreely running on the new machine. Will I be
> able to?
>
> Chuck.
>
>
> My web site is http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh (I C Q = 67363342)
> "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
> safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup