On my linux box I have a Sound Blaster AWE64 ISA Card and a 3dfx Desktop TV/FM PCI Card (also goes by STB Desktop TV/FM). The TV/FM card is based on the bt878 chipset with a Phillips NTSC Tuner. Anyway I have the audio from the TV tuner going into the Auxiliary port (internal) on my AWE and I have the CD out going to the CD-IN (internal) on the AWE. For sound I am using the ALSA version 1.0.5a with OSS Compatibility modules loaded.

When I launch the Gnome Mixer (gnome-volume-control) I have two tabs one saying CTL1745 [Audio Mixer (OSS)] and another that says Sound Blaster 16 [Alsa Mixer]. They both control my AWE Card. At startup as soon as ALSA loads my OSS Compatibility modules I get this loud deafening sound of static coming from my speaker.

Next I try using my Alsa Mixer to adjust the sound, of course no AUX control is present so I try one by one, and to my surprise it turns out that my AUX is controlled by the CD Volume. But not only that the CD Volume also controls the CD-IN volume, making it hard to listen to an audio cd if I wanted to without hearing either static or a properly tuned channel. On the ALSA Mixer checking the Mute box does nothing under the CD volume control...while if I go to the OSS Mixer and click the mute box under the CD Mixer it actually mutes!

So I push mute, effectively muting my CD-IN and AUX. So I fire up a tv app to make sure my tuner is working right. I tried both xawtv and tvtime, both load the tuner fine, with no sound, unless I actually adjust the volume from the mixer or from tvtime's or xawtv's volume control. After quiting tvtime or xawtv with the volume from my tuner unmuted it stays unmuted. So I have to go to the OSS mixer in gnome again and mute it!

Anyway this is very frustrating, how can I have it so that 1) My Aux and my CD volumes don't correspond to the same volume control in my mixer, 2) how can I get the ALSA Mute button working on the the volume controlling my AUX , and 3) How do I setup my tv/radio audio so that it mutes when I am not using a tv or radio application and unmute when I am?

Thank you in advance

Gnome mixer should not see both sb16 and CTL1745. What does your conf.modules, modules.conf or a file similar to it lists.

Here is my modules.conf:

# ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd

alias snd-card-0 snd-sbawe
alias snd-card-1 snd-bt87x

#i2c
alias char-major-89 i2c-dev

# module options should go here
# options snd-sbawe index=0
# options snd-bt87x index=1
# options i2c-core i2c_debug=1
# options i2c-algo-bit bit_test=1

# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 -snd-card-0

# card #1 Sound Blaster AWE 64
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

# card #2 bttv
alias char-major-81 videodev
alias char-major-81-0 bttv
options bttv card=40 tuner=2 radio=1 automute=1 audiomux=0

also I have the line /sbin/modprobe snd-sbawe in my rc.modules file, so that I get sound from my AWE Card, without that line the only thing that loads up I think is the audio chip from my tv tuner card? There's no name or tab that says what it is, all I see is a volume control for "Synth" and "In-Gain" Anyway is this the proper way to load that module? Also it seems that this rc.hotplug script loads a bunch of things.

The lines in modules.conf should be in rc.modules. Then just comment "/sbin/modprobe snd-sbawe". Slackware is different than other Linux distirbutions to automatically load up modules at boot up.

well I tried that but it didn't really like it...got a bunch of errors on startup from rc.S didn't load any of the snd-sbawe modules either, it did load the bttv stuff though, however it loads the bttv without any of the stuff I added to rc.modules. Another thing I noticed is that by adding these lines to my modules.conf

options snd-sbawe index=0
options snd-bt87x index=1

the snd-sbawe modules load (without /sbin/modprobe snd-sbawe in rc.modules) and so do the snd-bt87x ones, however I still encounter the same problem with the mixers and automuting.

I think ALSA may stop writing software for AWE64 because it is a very old sound card. Also ISA is becoming none existing in motherboards. I suggest getting PCI sound card like Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. It will be a great improvement on terms of sound quality and much easier to adjust the mixer. I do not know anything setting up ISA cards with kernel version 2.6.x You can try the OSS modules. Those will not have snd- prefix.


BTW, you probably have another version of AWE64 that the module can not detect what port to use.

Yeah I'm already in the process of throwing in a Sound Blaster 16 PCI I have lying around, thanks for your help though.