Hello all,

I'm considering buying a Creative X-Fi sound card, quite likely the Fatility. I've been trying to find a definitive answer on whether it will work, but a lot of the material I've read is 3-5 years old. A LOT changes in that time.

My system is using Fedora 11 64bit, and I'm using a custom kernel (version 2.6.37, the latest really) and alsa libs 1.0.23.

It seems as if there is a kernel module for the X-FI (snd-ctxfi), and supposedly Alsa supports it. Is support good, or still troublesome? Do I need something else?

What I'm most insterested in, is whether under Linux using the X-Fi I can have

* "Wavetable" support for midi's
* Play back sound according to the cards specs
* Record sounds according to the cards specs
* Adjust volume, use headphone and use an amp with the 3.5mm line out port.

Also, does it matter whether I get a PCI or PCI-e card? Are they both supported, or does using the PCI-e version mean headaches?

I'm guessing its OK, but I'm not sure, and I've done web searches with different results, but they seem to change depending on the year. The alsa says partial support, but I can't access the details page without logging on, so I'm not sure what 'partial' means.

Basically, all I want to know is, whether compatibility is an issue anymore, or as it is now in Feb 2011, you can buy one of these cards and its no issue.

the FIRST thing
install fedora 14

fedora 11 HAS been DEAD for about a year

I might switch to Ubuntu, and the relatively short support times for Fedora are annoying. It is constantly having to reinstall which was the reason I moved away from Windows, I'm not doing that in Linux too. I just install packages from Fedora 14 manually anyway (rather than a wholesale redo of my computer).

Thats beside the point anyway.
h

well that is exactly what fedora is
you agreed to tha defination of what fedora is when you installed it
It is a FAST pasted research and development distro

with the motto of
push it to it brakes , fix it .Push it some more till is brakes - refix - repeat

I really only agreed to the GPL. As I said, I use F14 packages to update anyway. Besides, it has no relevance to the topic of the thread.

People are going to look at this thread for a quick , unambiguous answer about Linux and X-FI cards thats up to date (and makes sense for newbies), not for talk about the shelf life of distros and their releases.

"I use F14 packages"
you put fedora 14 rpm's on fedora 11

that can and will fubar the system
the two are incompatible

no wonder there are problems
Frankenstein'ed systems are supported by NO ONE

to the topic

it works. there's no trouble that I know of and you don't need anything else, just the card

no. But that's not a Linux or driver issue, the card can't do it afaik. Use fluidsynth or timidity.

if you mean just pure playback with "according to card specs" then yes. But x-fi features like crystalizer etc. don't work. It won't sound any better than your onboard chip probably.
works
works

I'd probably get a pci-e since newer boards tend to omit pci slots. I don't know why they should give headaches.

I had an x-fi (pci) back in 2007 or 2008 and it worked all right. The driver was not part of alsa then, but you could download a proprietary one from creative. I have also tested the alsa driver later and never had problems, though I don't use the card anymore for quiet some time now.

My system works fine. I 'roll my own' updates using source code, either source RPMS from F14, or the 'upstream' sources. It works.

The whole point if GNU/Linux is that the user has freedom to use it as they want, as they see fit and to modify it (or not) as they wish.

My post was about X-FI cards and compatibility with ALSA and the kernel, not about a broken Fedora installation.

Thank you for that. I'm quite surprised that there is no soundfont support.

If there is no support for soundfonts, I might skip it and look for a different brand of card, unless someone has had a different experience.