On Sat, 05 Jun 1999, S.Toms wrote:

George wrote:

...

Hello, I am going to install a SB 16 (not PnP) CT1770. Is there any advantage to using OSS by 4front versus the driver built into the Linux kernal?

Upgrading is easier and quicker as you own't have to compile a new kernel

And the sound drivers in kernel 2.2 produce dropouts. And some people's hardware (like mine, which is the same as yours) are not friendly with the driver; the driver has a bug still which makes it so that you *must* load sb as a module on this card, and rmmod it on shutdown. Otherwise, if you don't cold boot it, it freezes solid when it tries to load it again. ------------------------------------------------ Ewan Dunbar northsky@ix.netcom.com ------------------------------------------------ Visit Preston Manning: Action Hero at <A HREF="http://earl.thedunbars.com/pmah/index.html"><A HREF="http://earl.thedunbars.com/pmah/index.html</A">http://earl.thedunbars.com/pmah/index.html</A</A>> ------------------------------------------------ -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e Check out the SuSE-FAQ at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A">http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A</A>> and the archive at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A">http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A</A>>

On Sun, 06 Jun 1999, Ralph Clark wrote:

Ewan Dunbar wrote:

...

And the sound drivers in kernel 2.2 produce dropouts. And some people's hardware (like mine, which is the same as yours) are not friendly with the driver; the driver has a bug still which makes it so that you *must* load sb as a module on this card, and rmmod it on shutdown. Otherwise, if you don't cold boot it, it freezes solid when it tries to load it again.

I'm using the kernel OPL3/SA2 driver myself, with the 2.2.9 kernel. I have noticed > two problems and I'm canvassing for more information:

1) When playing midi files in kmidi, there are often 'dropouts' whenever I do something else that wants the CPU. I think this might be what Ewan means he is referring to dropouts. Is this a kmidi issue or a kernel 2.2 issue? Is it restricted to any particular version of kernel 2.2?

Possibly a kernel issue. The dropouts occur when heavy (or sometimes light) disk access occurs while playing with /dev/audio or /dev/dsp. I haven't noticed them occurring with kmidi, though, so maybe it buffers or something. So, this problem is due to the fact that kmidi uses a *lot* of CPU power. The reason? It converts MIDIs to wav sounds first. Which is why they sound so good. But this takes up just as much CPU power as (or more than) playing high-quality MP3s. The answer is to downsample. This is done with command-line switches. You'll have to, as root, change your main Kmidi Applnk file. Or just make one for you with your own personalised switches. I can't remember what the exact switches are.

2) Frequently I lose sound altogether for a time. When this happens, I see the following message repeated in /var/log/messages whenever there is a request for some sound:

kernel: Sound error: Couldn't allocate DMA buffer

Has anybody else seen this? Under what kernels? Does anybody have any ideas what might be causing it?

I don't think I've seen this, and I don't think I can remember what causes it, but try OSS. It may be related to the dropout problem. ------------------------------------------------ Ewan Dunbar northsky@ix.netcom.com ------------------------------------------------ Visit Preston Manning: Action Hero at <A HREF="http://earl.thedunbars.com/pmah/index.html"><A HREF="http://earl.thedunbars.com/pmah/index.html</A">http://earl.thedunbars.com/pmah/index.html</A</A>> ------------------------------------------------ -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e Check out the SuSE-FAQ at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A">http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A</A>> and the archive at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A">http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A</A>>