Duelling sound cards (was: Re: [plug] Dual sound cards)

[Sham Chukoury]

On Sat, 2004-02-07 at 17:27, Cameron Patrick wrote:

> In XMMS, I can go to Preferences, Output plugin, Configure, and see a
> drop-down list of sounds cards.  That's using the crossfade plugin
> (which you should be using anyway because it's better that the stock OSS
> one :-P).  I'm not sure if the standard OSS plugin supports this.  I'd
> be surprised if the ALSA one didn't.

The ALSA XMMS output plugin (1.2.9) also has a dropdown list of audio
devices it can find. The OSS XMMS plugin (1.2.9) has textboxes where you
can specify which sound device to use. Depending on what order you
inserted the drivers for your sound devices (assuming the drivers are
built as modules), one will be /dev/dsp0 (usually linked to /dev/dsp)
and the other will be /dev/dsp1.

More on using ALSA and two sound cards: use 'alsamixer -c <id>' to
adjust volume levels and such things for the devices. <id> would be 0
for the first sound device (device whose driver was loaded first) and 1
for the second device. Throw in a bootscript to save and restore device
states and it's all good. :)

> KDE Control Centre has a "Use custom sound device" check box under Sound
> & Multimedia -> Sound System, which is probably the right thing to
> fiddle with but I wouldn't have a clue what you're meant to type into
> the box next to it.  My preferred solution is to switch off KDE's sound
> server (which is only used for making obnoxious noises anyway) and let
> everything speak directly to /dev/dsp.

I got no idea how KDE's config influences sound overall, but I doubt
you'd need artsd at all, when you've got the sb live!'s hardware mixer.
:P

Also, does the kernel have the emu10k1 driver built? :) The sb live! is
unusable without it.

I've got both my sb live! and onboard sound working fine here (sometimes
simultaneously - using TeamSpeak on one device while the other device
handles sound for Enemy Territory).

§:)