[CentOS] Sound device has been blown away

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

On Sat, 2005-09-24 at 01:44 +0900, Dave Gutteridge wrote:
> > If the on-board soundcard is a true SB Live! then you should give using
> > it a try as it *does* support hardware mixing.
> 
> I don't quite understand this issue of hardware mixing.

SB Live! can have multiple programs open it and the built-in electronics
will handle mixing the input streams into a single output stream. USB
audio doesn't require the device to do this, and I'm not even sure if
it's possible for USB audio devices to do so.

> XMMS and Xine both played on my USB Kenwood device. Does that mean that
> those applications don't require any mixing anywhere? They do it on
> their own?
> 
> And then FireFox didn't work with my Kenwood device, meaning that
> FireFox needs some kind of other software to do the sound mixing?
> 
> I guess why I'm lost is that no matter what, for any sound to play,
> CentOS needs to detect and have support for the audio device. Since it
> detects and outputs sound through my Kenwood device for some programs,
> why do other programs not use the same settings?

xmms and xine both support ALSA properly, so you can point them wherever
you need the output to go.

The Flash plugin supports OSS, so getting it to go where you need is a
matter of fiddling around with your module settings, or changing
definitions in ALSA to get it pointing to the right place.

> Also, part of the reason I'm attached to using my USB Kenwood device is
> that it takes a digital signal all the way to my Kenwood stereo, and
> doesn't get analog until it gets to the speakers. It has great sound,
> and they are the only speakers I have (living in Tokyo means space is at
> a premium).
> If I go the SB Live on-board route, the only option is to run a cable
> from the sound card to the auxiliary input, which is analog, and then
> amplify it through the speakers. It's noticeably not as good.

Well, if the Kenwood has a digital input then you should be able to have
the SB Live! generate a digital-only signal and feed it into the
Kenwood.

-- 
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazquez at ivazquez.net>
http://centos.ivazquez.net/

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