sound card woes (yes, I've searched old threads)

Well, I started in the Distro - Slackware forum, and I didn't receive much by way of responses. Also, I realized I may be having a legitimate hardware issue. Or at least driver related.

I've got VIA AC '97 on-board sound and I've been having some troubles.
1. When I first installed Slackware, I installed Alsa drivers, not knowing that there were VIA kernel drivers I could have loaded. Sound in KDE (through ARTS) was great, but sound in Gnome (through Esound) was horrible.
2. Then I noticed that applications that were native to Gnome also gave me squealy sound in KDE unless I forced them through the ARTS server. I reintalled the newest version of Esound. Nothing changed. But I figured I could live with it.
3. When I installed the "Crossover" plugin to see cool Quicktime movie trailers, I was again shocked to hear the squealing and popping from my speakers even though I had installed this from KDE and was using it within KDE! I COULD NOT force the "Crossover" stuff through ARTS. That's where I drew the line with my bastard sound card.
4. Finally, after doing some reading, I removed the Alsa drivers, and loaded the VIA kernel drivers. Here are the results of my lsmod:

Module Size Used by Not tainted
via82cxxx_audio 18080 1
ac97_codec 9568 0 [via82cxxx_audio]
soundcore 3236 2 [via82cxxx_audio]
tdfx 36408 11
pcmcia_core 40896 0
ide-scsi 7456 0
tulip 37184 1
printer 5632 1
usb-uhci 20708 0 (unused)
usbcore 48000 0 [printer usb-uhci]
agpgart 29824 0 (unused)

Now, I've got great sound through ARTS (which I had before), but I have no sound in Gnome. Esound can't seem to load because it's trying to find Alsa stuff, and it can't.

My proposed solution:
reinstall Esound without Alsa support.

My question:
Will this work, or do I need to find OSS drivers to help out Esound?

Thanks in advance for any comments about my overall problem, or my question in particular...

--Akshun J

I recommend buying the OSS drivers from <www.opensound.com>

It is $20, but you'll never have sound worries again. After that, simply recompile all the software you are having problems with.

Not ruling that out as an option at this point, but I'd really like to reserve it as a fallback position. Thanks for the suggestion, though!

Any other opinions out there?

--Akshun J

Holy freakin' @$%&! My plugin for Quicktime is working! Wow!

Well, I was checking out the post below mine (about sound in RedHat not working) and I noticed a module called "sound" in that guy's lsmod. He has the same sound card that I do, but I didn't seem to have that module loaded. So I loaded it. And voila! Sweet sound from Quicktime!

Now, I'm not sure how to modify my modules.config file. Anyone have any advice?

--Akshun J

Oh, yeah! I almost forgot. Here's what my NEW lsmod looks like...

Module Size Used by Not tainted
sound 52876 0
via82cxxx_audio 18080 1
ac97_codec 9568 0 [via82cxxx_audio]
soundcore 3236 4 [sound via82cxxx_audio]
tdfx 36408 11
pcmcia_core 40896 0
ide-scsi 7456 0
tulip 37184 1
printer 5632 1
usb-uhci 20708 0 (unused)
usbcore 48000 0 [printer usb-uhci]
agpgart 29824 0 (unused)

Any advice as to what that modules.conf file should look like?

--Akshun J

afaik (remember, im a linux newbie too ) you can just go "modprobe sound" or "insmod sound"...they both do the same thing

Well, then. I just went ahead and zapped most of my modules.conf file except for two lines about "sound" instead of "snd", and "soundcore." Everything works in KDE except that anything not routed through ARTS has to wait till ARTS is suspended in order to function.

Esound still won't work since ALSA doesn't get loaded. Therefore I have zero sound in Gnome.

Question: Does anyone know if Gnome will use ARTS instead of Esound? I can live without using Gnome, but I'd like to explore all the relevant issues purely as a Linux learning experience...

Thanks all!

--Akshun J