On Sun, 11 Jun 2000, Hugo van der Merwe wrote: > Hello, > > Should I CC this to debian-user? I'd guess this sound card is probably not > Laptop-only... > > I have an ESS Maestro 2, with which I am having a small problem: after > playing music for a while, the left channel starts scratching. This is > also sometimes triggered by a small processing task, e.g. starting X... or > sometimes something as trivial as `ps ax` stopping the music for a couple > of seconds and then resuming tends to stop the scratching. > > I am wondering if it is the hardware, or possibly the driver? I get the > idea that as soon as the audio device is freed and "reallocated" (I'm > running esd -as 2, which frees the audio device after 2 seconds of > inactivity, allowing other users to use it) the scratching goes away, but > that could be just coincidence. I'll experiment some more with how to get > the scratching to stop, but it is rather difficult, as there is no quick > way to get it to scratch in the first place. > > Any ideas? I'm thinking of taking the laptop back to the manufacturer so > that they can check/replace the sound card, I just want to make sure that > there is a good chance it is actually the hardware. > > Thanks, > Hugo van der Merwe >
Hello. I also own a laptop wearing a Maestro 2. I've experimented some kind of delay between the two channels when playing mp3; it seems very close to your problem because it also happens under task swapping or heavy load conditions. I also have detected that when I suspend the laptop, the driver stops working (when the laptop wake up, of course :-) ). This doesn't happen when I hibernate it. I think that the driver is not so complete as it were desired. Anyway, have you tested the 2.2.16 kernel? I think that there was an update of the driver in this version. Good luck, Manuel Teira.
