Hi,
I have an audigy and i installed ALSA drivers (had really crappy sounds with the OSS drivers). The ALSA drivers are loaded, analog output is fine, but i can't switch to digital out (I usually only use digital out).

Here is what i wrote in my /etc/modules.conf :

------CUT------

# ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd
options snd-emu10k1 snd_extin=0x0003 snd_extout=0x1f0f
alias snd-card-0 snd-emu10k1

# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore

# OSS/Free portion
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0

# OSS/Free portion - card #1
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

------CUT------

i added this at the end.
Can't figure out what to do to make it work. If someone managed to install alsa drivers, using digital output with an audigy/Sblive, please help!!

dunno if someone cares, but i found an answer: Digital out isen't supported for audigy cards yet, by ALSA.

I know this is a very old post, but I care. I've been trying desperately for days trying to work out how to enable digital out put on my Audigy card. I don't care if its OSS or ALSA, I just want to see it working.

BTW which is prefereable and why?

Thanks,

Q

From the creative opensource page,
Q.C1- What features are currently supported?



Stereo wave audio input and output
Rear speaker support
Up to 32 simultaneous playback instances via multiple-open on /dev/dsp
Digital SPDIF input and output
Mixer support
Joystick support
External MIDI device support
Works with 2.2 and 2.4 series kernels, with or without SMP

Q.C2- What cards are supported by this driver?


The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 will be supported soon. All Sound Blaster Live cards, the Sound Blaster PCI 512, and the Sound Blaster Audigy cards are supported, with a few notable exceptions:


Dell ships a card with the Dimension line called the "SoundBlaster Live 5.1" (CT0200) which doesn't work with this (or any other driver). If you are ordering a Dell, tell them you are using Linux and they should be able to sell you another SoundBlaster which will work.
The digital/analog output jack on some OEM models isn't supported -- you'll get analog output.
Support for the Live and Audigy Drives is possible but requires the DSP microcode tools.
The gamer and MP3 variants are exactly the same card under Linux.

Yes thanks for that. This page is very good at telling you what is supported, but not how to enable it. What I need to do is enable digital out put only so that everything is passed to my digital out cable. I have the cable plugged into the digital out socket but can hear no sound, so how do I enable digital out only in the mixer set up? What in practical terms must I do to achieve this? I have searched the web for days on end looking for an answer to this, but have found nothing...

Q

Download emu10k1-v0.20a.tar.bz2 and follow the instructions, of particular interest is audigy-script and emu10k1.conf, all the options are modified by editing these two files, the instructions are in
emu10k1-v0.20a/docs/README-TOOLS, note you don't need to dowload the tools package as a newer version is in the emu10k1 package.

Yes I tried that and I already installed the latest drivers, but there is still no info on how to enable digital sound out. I read the file right through and can find nothing. You would think it should be simpler than this. Why don't creative provide a mixer similar to the ones they have in Windows? Enabling digital out in Windows is simply a matter of checking a box saying 'enable digital output only'. There is no option in any of the mixers I have seen in Linux to do this.

This is very frustrating, I learned how to compile a kernel this week, which was fairly difficult to do at first. Why this should be so much harder I don't know...

Q

Ps

What I guess i'm asking is what I physically have to do to enable digital sound out -put. New drivers are always nice, but this does not quite resolve my dilema...

You _don't_ enable digital out in a mixer, you enable it in emu10k1.conf and set it with audigy-script, go back and _read_ the docs.

Yes thanks for that, but I think we might be at cross purposes here I installed the drivers - and did as you advised and read the doccumentation and went to /usr/local/etc/audigy-script and made all the required adjustments to emu10k1.conf but when I attempted to run ./emu-script I get a message /dev/mixer: No such device.

I did find an obscure hint of what I might need to do on a web site featuring a snippet from and old (out of date year 2000) Linux user manual (it was incomplete so I couldn't read it all). It said:

Q: It quits with 'xmixer: Can't open /dev/mixer: No such
file or directory'

A: You can use this program only if you have a soundcard.
Check if the file exists. If not, check the sound-faq
on how to create the device entry.

Now its odd that it should mention Xmixer because on a previous attempt to install this driver It did start asking for this, even though it is no longer being maintained - I think the last version was a couple of years ago... But more significant than this is the indication that I might have to create a device entry. I have no clue how to do this. This error stating /dev/mixer: No such file or directory is the most persistant I have encountered, its almost like its saying my soundcard and the driver has not been physically detected. (Although I'm not sure if that's what it means). I tried inserting the new driver as a module and it spewed out the following:

Using /lib/modules/2.4.19-16mdkcustom/kernel/drivers/sound/emu10k1/emu10k1.o
/lib/modules/2.4.19-16mdkcustom/kernel/drivers/sound/emu10k1/emu10k1.o: unresolved symbol ac97_read_proc_Rbae4da72
/lib/modules/2.4.19-16mdkcustom/kernel/drivers/sound/emu10k1/emu10k1.o: unresolved symbol unregister_sound_mixer_R7afc9d8a
/lib/modules/2.4.19-16mdkcustom/kernel/drivers/sound/emu10k1/emu10k1.o: unresolved symbol register_sound_midi_Rbf6f8682
/lib/modules/2.4.19-16mdkcustom/kernel/drivers/sound/emu10k1/emu10k1.o: unresolved symbol ac97_probe_codec_R84601c2b
/lib/modules/2.4.19-16mdkcustom/kernel/drivers/sound/emu10k1/emu10k1.o: unresolved symbol register_sound_mixer_Rf2837cd4
/lib/modules/2.4.19-16mdkcustom/kernel/drivers/sound/emu10k1/emu10k1.o: unresolved symbol register_sound_dsp_Rc2942e01
/lib/modules/2.4.19-16mdkcustom/kernel/drivers/sound/emu10k1/emu10k1.o: unresolved symbol unregister_sound_dsp_Rcd083b10
/lib/modules/2.4.19-16mdkcustom/kernel/drivers/sound/emu10k1/emu10k1.o: unresolved symbol unregister_sound_midi_Rfdab6de3

So it looks like its looking in a default location for the driver and the driver isn't there. (Clearly so, since the advice when installing the new driver was to disable audigy support in the kernel). (I do still have sound support enabled though, I only disabled 'audigy support' nothing else).

I have stuck with this very hard over the last 4 weeks - and have learned a very great deal about Linux in that short time. But despite this I am no further along towards my goal of hearing good quality sound or seeing good quality 3D accelearation (another issue) on my linux set-up. Achieving these two goals would, I had convinced myself, pursuade me to move to Linux permanantly. While I am not quite ready to quit yet, I am comming close to the point where going on would be all but pointless. It seems impossible to get good sound and graphics working on a Linux machine.

On a side note, you seem to know a great deal about how to install these drivers. Am I to assume you have a creative card? If so could you please simply detail how you installed them and got them working? No one can accuse me of not trying, or of not reading enough information. I have searched for weeks to try to resolve these issues, I have asked countless people on countless forums, I have trawled through possibly thousands of web pages - I even asked the guy who deals with open source at Creative.com - but he said he didn't know either. So please if you know how to do this can you just lay it out for me for once and for all? The driver doccumentation says its possible, several people I have spoken to say it is possible, but so far no one has described how it is possible.

I did though manage to install the commercial version of the OSS drivers (several Mandrake installs ago) and got them working. (So at least I know there's nothing physically wrong with my set up). But they were terrible. Only two speaker support and they sounded like someone on a very old scratched record was speaking into a tin can. Not good for drivers you are expected to pay $20 for.

If your response suggests I should abandon this quest, this is what I will do. I am no quitter, but after this I fail to see how I can possibly proceed.

Q

I have a SoundBlaster Live 5.1 D.E, I installed the drivers following the instructions in the emu10k1 package (this is the same code that is in the kernel only slighty more advanced). I also have a nvidia card with hardware 3d working perfectly so you can get both sound and 3d graphics in linux, we just have to discover why it's not working in your mandrake install. Can you do "lspci" -vv" and post the output please?

Ok I will, but I just installed Mandrake again, so you will have to bare with me for about an hour while I do a recompile. (I reinstalled due to a messed up video driver install (but again that's a different issue).

Here is the initial output of lspci and lsmod before recompile, which could be useful for comparrison with my modified kernel.

In my modified kenel I am only going to do three things. First turn on all ACPI features (useful as I have a dual MP 2200 Athlon XP system, with several plug-in cards), second I will disable audigy support, as per the instructions in the driver docs, third I will disable Radeon support (for my Radeon 8500 graphics card) so that I can install the latest Open Gl Accelerated drivers from the Xfree86 4.3 branch, as the present drivers do not support full 3D acceleration.

Here is the current output::

[root@localhost root]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-760 MP [IGD4-2P] System Controller (rev 11)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-760 MP [IGD4-2P] AGP Bridge
00:07.0 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-768 [Opus] ISA (rev 04)
00:07.1 IDE interface: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-768 [Opus] IDE (rev 04)
00:07.3 Bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-768 [Opus] ACPI (rev 03)
00:08.0 Unknown mass storage controller: Promise Technology, Inc. 20268 (rev 02)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-768 [Opus] PCI (rev 04)
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon QL
02:05.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C (rev 10)
02:06.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 41)
02:06.1 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 41)
02:06.2 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB 2.0 (rev 02)
02:08.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy (rev 03)
02:08.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy MIDI/Game port (rev 03)
02:08.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Creative Labs SB Audigy FireWire Port
[root@localhost root]# lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
ppp_deflate 41024 0 (autoclean)
bsd_comp 4376 0 (autoclean)
autofs4 9788 2 (autoclean)
nfs 70112 1 (autoclean)
parport_pc 21896 1 (autoclean)
lp 6944 0 (autoclean)
parport 25344 1 (autoclean) [parport_pc lp]
sr_mod 15128 0 (autoclean) (unused)
floppy 50172 0 (autoclean)
audigy 62636 0
soundcore 4164 0 [audigy]
ac97_codec 9992 0 [audigy]
nfsd 67472 0 (autoclean)
lockd 47056 1 (autoclean) [nfs nfsd]
sunrpc 64732 1 (autoclean) [nfs nfsd lockd]
ppp_async 7872 1
ppp_generic 23044 3 [ppp_deflate bsd_comp ppp_async]
slhc 5104 0 [ppp_generic]
af_packet 14376 0 (autoclean)
ip_vs 79992 0 (autoclean)
ipchains 42988 0 (unused)
8139too 15048 0 (autoclean) (unused)
mii 1200 0 (autoclean) [8139too]
ohci1394 17292 0 (unused)
ieee1394 33868 0 [ohci1394]
nls_cp850 3580 1 (autoclean)
vfat 9652 1 (autoclean)
fat 32760 0 (autoclean) [vfat]
nls_iso8859-15 3356 2 (autoclean)
ntfs 73548 1 (autoclean)
supermount 14500 3 (autoclean)
ide-scsi 8244 0
usb-storage 52408 0
scsi_mod 92836 3 [sr_mod ide-scsi usb-storage]
ehci-hcd 15112 0 (unused)
usb-ohci 18952 0 (unused)
usbcore 61056 1 [usb-storage ehci-hcd usb-ohci]
rtc 7328 0 (autoclean)
ext3 77396 1
jbd 41984 1 [ext3]

I wonder if it is wise, since after doing this the kernel is likely to complain that no mixers are present after doing this to load soundcard support into the kernel rather than as a module? I will try both approaches and see which works best...

Q

BTW should I enable framebuffer support for my video card, or disable that too? What is it and is it important to 3D acceleration?

Q

Ok this time I did everything to the letter I removed audigy support and rebuilt the kernel I went to emu10k1.conf and edited it appropriately, I opened a command promt and ran the script ./emu-script
The result:

/dev/mixer: No such file or directory

Here is the lspci and lsmod ouput after recompiling the kernel.

[root@localhost root]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-760 MP [IGD4-2P] System Controller (rev 11)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-760 MP [IGD4-2P] AGP Bridge
00:07.0 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-768 [Opus] ISA (rev 04)
00:07.1 IDE interface: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-768 [Opus] IDE (rev 04)
00:07.3 Bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-768 [Opus] ACPI (rev 03)
00:08.0 Unknown mass storage controller: Promise Technology, Inc. 20268 (rev 02)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-768 [Opus] PCI (rev 04)
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon QL
02:05.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C (rev 10)
02:06.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 41)
02:06.1 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 41)
02:06.2 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB 2.0 (rev 02)
02:08.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy (rev 03)
02:08.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy MIDI/Game port (rev 03)
02:08.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Creative Labs SB Audigy FireWire Port
[root@localhost root]# lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
ppp_deflate 41024 0 (autoclean)
bsd_comp 4376 0 (autoclean)
msdos 5396 0 (autoclean)
isofs 25912 0 (autoclean)
inflate_fs 18052 0 (autoclean) [isofs]
udf 87680 0 (autoclean)
autofs4 9788 2 (autoclean)
nfs 70016 1 (autoclean)
parport_pc 21896 1 (autoclean)
lp 6944 0 (autoclean)
parport 25344 1 (autoclean) [parport_pc lp]
sr_mod 15128 0 (autoclean)
floppy 50172 0 (autoclean)
nfsd 67472 0 (autoclean)
lockd 47056 1 (autoclean) [nfs nfsd]
sunrpc 64732 1 (autoclean) [nfs nfsd lockd]
ppp_async 7872 1
ppp_generic 23044 3 [ppp_deflate bsd_comp ppp_async]
slhc 5104 0 [ppp_generic]
af_packet 14376 0 (autoclean)
ip_vs 79992 0 (autoclean)
ipchains 42988 0 (unused)
8139too 15048 0 (autoclean) (unused)
mii 1200 0 (autoclean) [8139too]
ohci1394 17292 0 (unused)
ieee1394 33868 0 [ohci1394]
nls_cp850 3580 1 (autoclean)
vfat 9652 1 (autoclean)
fat 32760 0 (autoclean) [msdos vfat]
nls_iso8859-15 3356 2 (autoclean)
ntfs 73548 1 (autoclean)
supermount 14500 3 (autoclean)
ide-scsi 8244 0
usb-storage 52408 0
scsi_mod 92836 3 [sr_mod ide-scsi usb-storage]
ehci-hcd 15112 0 (unused)
usb-ohci 18952 0 (unused)
usbcore 61056 1 [usb-storage ehci-hcd usb-ohci]
rtc 7328 0 (autoclean)
ext3 77396 1
jbd 41984 1 [ext3]
[root@localhost root]#

So I wonder if you (or anyone reading this) can spot anything that I have done wrong, or that is missing here. Where did the audigy driver go to after it installed? (Installing it is very easy). Is the system looking in the correct location for it and if I do need to create a mixer device in /dev how do I do this. (If I try to add anything to the /dev section, even as root, I get an error message saying 'permission denied'). What more can I do to get this driver to work?

Q

Just to clarify also, I looked in the /dev section and there is indeed no mixer entry. Also when starting the sound server I get a message:

Sound server informational message:
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device /dev/dsp can't be opened (No such file or directory)
The sound server will continue, using the null output device.

I also read somewhere too that I might need to edit permissions if I am to add myself to the sound group (even though I'm running as root) although i'm not quite clear about what this means yet.

Also I found this advice on a WINE FAQ (unrelated I know but it could be significant). It says:

sound device /dev/dsp... CRITICAL (/dev/dsp does not exist). - ADVICE: use MAKEDEV script to create it. 005. Checking audio mixer device /dev/mixer... CRITICAL (/dev/mixer does not exist). - ADVICE: use MAKEDEV script to create it. 006. Checking MIDI sequencer device /dev/sequencer... BAD (no kernel driver for /dev/sequencer?). - ADVICE: module loading problems ? Read /usr/src/linux/Documentation/modules.txt.

However this still isn't very clear to me what I should do.

Please can you advise? I am still very much a n00b in this department...

Q

PS

I went back into the creative driver set up directory and found a folder called 'mixer' I ran a make and make install script in here and watched were it installed to. It created 3 files called as10k1, emu-config and emu-dspmgr.

running the first of these gives:

[root@localhost etc]# as10k1
Error, an input file must be specified
[root@localhost etc]#

Running the second gives:

[root@localhost bin]# emu-config
/dev/mixer: No such device
[root@localhost bin]#

and running the third gives exactly the same result as the second. It seems it really, really wants this mixer device thingy... Also this /dev/dsp seems to be a requirement too...

I'm not sure if this is significant, but I'm scratching in the dust here: But here is the setup of the driver config file, which comes with the drivers downloaded from Creative open source. Perhaps I am very wrong but it looks like it is looking for the kernel source in the wrong location:

# Driver build options
KERNEL_SOURCE :=/lib/modules/`uname -r`/build
DEBUG := n
SEQUENCER_SUPPORT := n

# say no unless you need to use the dbgemu tool,
# note that this allows users raw access to any register
# it should not be used in a normal driver.
DBGEMU := n

export KERNEL_SOURCE

Is this even remotely relevant? My kernel source is in /usr/src/linux-2.4.19-16mdk

Q