Hi Peter! On 2007.02.17 at 22:45:32 +0100, Peter wrote next:
> 0) linux people don't care about hardware mixing [why? software mixing in > linux is a big building site and was never capable to provide me the comforts > and possibilities I got with hardware mixing on the emu10k1 based cards.] The truth is, "hardware mixing" isn't the hot thing right now. Just like hardware MIDI synth, it's more or less deprecated. Low-end (like integrated ones) sound cards don't support it because they must be cheap. High-end professional cards for musicians don't need it because it's better to have practically unlimited amount of streams that you can mix in software with 32-bit precision on any sampling rate than to be limited in number of streams, sampling rate and mixing/resampling conversion quality. This doesn't applies to all high-end devices though, software processing is preferred now, still there is some use for hardware processors, but these devices are rare and expensive. As about middle-ranged cards, they are either about delivering higher quality sound than onboards cards (models from M-Audio, Terratec) - they don't need hardware mixing because software works very well nowadays, or about gaming (Creative cards) - the only ones that truly need hardware mixing, to unload mixing big amount of streams off processor. In other words, if you really desire hardware mixing, buy creative card. Audigy 2, Audigy 4, then X-Fi.. well you know where it leads. So I suggest you to rethink, maybe you don't need hardware mixing that much after all. As a former Live! 5.1 and Audigy 2 ZS user that now uses M-Audio Audiophile USB, I can tell you that problems with software mixing in linux aren't that big. If you don't need exceptional sound quality, just use onboard card; if you do, buying Creative card is wrong. Just buy something like M-Audio Revolution, Terratec Aureon, or more expensive ESI Juli@, EMU 1212M instead. Or, better yet, some USB card that feeds off AC adapter, not USB port - believe me, you won't regret it. I still have Audigy 2 ZS plugged in, but there is no way I'll use it for playing back any music - external M-Audio card is so much better when it comes to audio quality, both analog and digital outputs are much superior (also integrated headphone amplifier on this model should be mentioned - not perfect, but better than cheap OP-AMP models like ART HeadAMP). I use jack as sound server. mplayer supports jack, recent gstreamer finally has working jackaudiosink, other application either use jack directly or work via alsa->jack redirection plugin. If you distro doesn't support jack it might be a little pain to rebuild required pieces of software with jack support, but it's not that hard, and some modern distros have very good jack support. Of course, jack isn't the only solution, but it's the best one if you want to be sure you are not compromising any quality. -- Vladimir ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Alsa-user mailing list Alsa-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user
