I finally got my sound working under Mandrake 10.0 Official download. I have a
Crystal Sound Fusion CS4610/1 sound card. In both CE and Official, this was
recognized during installation. But when logging in, I always got a popup
error saying that /dev/dsp didn't exist, so sound was being routed
to /dev/null. Sure enough, no sound.
The default driver installed for this card is cs46xx. Sounded reasonable to
me. But snd-cs46xx was listed as an alternative. I tried that and got some
slightly different error messages during boot, but still the same popup, and
still no sound.
I discovered during this that the cs46xx driver has been blacklisted by the
kernel developers. It is known not to work! I have to ask, what is Mandrake
doing, not only supplying a blacklisted driver, but making it the default?
Isn't anyone paying attention over there?
Anyway, /var/log/messages to the rescue again. There were a number of lines in
there about the sound card, but the notable ones were:
kernel: create - never read codec ready from AC'97
kernel: it is not probably bug, try to use cs4236 driver
Now there is no cs4236 driver available on the Mandrake install (though there
is a cs4232), but there is an snd-cs4236. I switched to that, rebooted, and
voila, I have sound.
It's a little messed up now, possibly due to the use of a driver for an older
model of sound card. KMix is convinced that it's mono sound, even though it's
actually stereo (I use Pink Floyd's "Money" to test stereo, nothing better
for that).
With the default settings, the instrumental comes through okay on both
channels, but the voice sounds like they're singing through a vacuum cleaner
hose. When I tell KMix to split the channels and slide either slider down
half way the voice starts coming through clear, but I lose half the
instrumental volume on whichever channel I slid down. I set the left at 100%
and the right at 75% and I get a reasonable compromise. I don't notice the
difference in most songs, though on ones like Money that make heavy use of
the stereo, I notice the reduced right channel instrumental.
If anyone has any thoughts on how to improve the sound, I'm listening.
Otherwise, I'll live with it the way it is.
--
Ron Hunter-Duvar
ronhd at users dot sourceforge dot net
Opinions expressed here are all mine. Rights to use
these opinions are granted under the GNU GPL.
____________________________________________________
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft?
Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
____________________________________________________
