Re: [linux-audio-user] So what's your laptop sound like ?

New Message Reply About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Other groups

Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] So what's your laptop sound like ?
From: Free Ekanayaka (free_AT_centrotemporeale.it)
Date: Mon Aug 26 2002 - 17:54:10 EEST


Il 25/08/02 Dave wrote...

> Greetings:
>
> I'm putting the finishing touches on an article about setting up sound
> on my laptop, and it occurred to me that there may be some common models
> that are advisable to new users who particularly want to get decent
> audio from their laptop machines.

Hi Dave, here's my work in progress set up...

>
> 1) What laptop do you use (if any, of course) ?

Toshiba Tecra 9100

>
> 2) What audio chipset does it have inside ?

Intel ICH3 Audio Controller

> 3) What sound driver(s) do you use ?

ALSA snd-intel8x0

I still dont understand where is the problem (ALSA, audio chipset,
laptop hardware, myself..), but the audio stream often hangs or
produces very bad dropouts, latency is horrible too.

>
> 4) Are you using any of the following:
> (B) USB audio equipment

I dont have USB audio equipment at the hand at the moment, but
I'm testing the USB Midi interface Midisport 2x2 both with the
ALSA snd-usb-midi driver and the tiny usb-midi driver
(http://member.nifty.ne.jp/Breeze/softwares/unix/usbmidi-e.html).

It worked with both, even if I still have to do better testing (2
inputs and 2 outputs at the same time, tweaking with channels and
controllers, midi thru, etc.).

Furthermore I'm doing a debian package for AGNULA that
contains the ezusbmidi firmware necessary to get the
device working and that uses the hotplug utility to automate the
firmware downloading, making the Midisport totally plug & play :)

I plan to test the driver also with a usb midi keyboard
(Midiman Oxygen8).

> (C) PCMCIA audio card

Just yesterday I inserted the Hammerfall DSP card in the
PCMCIA slot, and after some problems in detecting the right module
for the PCMCIA-PCI bridge I tried to modprobe snd-hdsp. The driver
recognizes the card but it hangs during initialization, because of
the acpi system cant assign an IRQ to the device, or something
like that.. I have to investigate how to solve this, hints ?

> 5) Was your experience setting up sound on your laptop:
> (A) Dismal - too much trouble for too little reward
> (B) Dedicated - took a little work but you're happy now
> (C) Delightful - installation & configuration was an easy breeze

As usual the most painful thing is hw detection: guess what you
have inside and what module to load. Expecially the video
chipset and the need of the acpi patch made life harder.

> 6) How do you use your laptop audio system, i.e., listening to XMMS,
> composing with realtime output from Pd or Csound, soundfile editing with
> Audacity or Snd, etc. ?

by now I cant enjoy this machine a lot for active music music
because of bad soundcard behaviour (anyway I hope it can be
fixed), so apart from midi sequencing and having fun with xmms I
cant do a lot.

BTW the eepro100 net module (and the e100 too) hangs a
times (expecially when used together with the sound card, e.g.
during a speak freely session in full duplex).

I'll post every detail about installation and trouble shooting on
mobilx as soon as I get a decent set up.

cheers

--

- Free -


New Message Reply About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Other groups

This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Mon Aug 26 2002 - 17:25:52 EEST