[plug] Mandrake LE2005 Sound

[Craig Ringer]

On Fri, 2005-09-23 at 17:28 +0800, David Dartnall wrote:

> My last report to this list was of thanks to those of you who offered
> help. I had sound for mouth, playing cd's and headphones and mike
> worked, but no midi. I was able to complete one skype-out call and now
> nothing - seems as though KDE takes control, /dev/dsp in use by
> another process

If your system uses ALSA, maybe it's not using the software mixer. If
your card only has one channel, that'll mean only one thing can access
the sound device at a time - and since KDE likes to start its sound
daemon, arts, that'll take control.

Maybe this (first Google hit) will help:
http://www.sourcemage.org/howto-alsa_software_mixer
or this:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=18522

> It's too bloody complicated for me!
> 
> MAybe I should buy a sound card (with hardware synth to avoid further
> difficulty when I finally get consistent sound and have to move on to
> Rosegardsen's synth and sound font requirements).

I can second others' comments on the SB series of cards. Their sound
output is pretty decent (to my not-all-that-musical ear, anyway) and
they work well. The SB live series are getting pretty ancient, but the
Audigy series seem to be coming down to sane prices.

--
Craig Ringer