I have *just* installed the newest alsa drivers for my soundcard (SB Live! Value) and after loading up X and running up, I get currpted graphics and stuttering sound in games (read ut2003). I can understand the sound, I mean it is *supposed* to be a sound driver, but currupted graphics?? (I know I am running the latets alpha FGL's, but the whole desktop? after insatlling these... naaahh! it's the ALSA) and I am not the only one experiencing this, also with other graphics chips happens (aka nVidia).

For those of you who have read other posts I've made, you know about the latest FGL drivers and the XF 4.3 cursor bug. For those of you who do not knwo about this:

I am running RH 9/XF 4.3.0 on this hardware:

AMD Athlon XP 1800+
512 Mb DDR 333 RAM
Western Digital HD 40 Gb.
OS ONLY Red Hat 9 (no dual boot, thank god!)
Radeon 9500 128 Mb DDR VRAM (non pro)
SB Live! Value

I will revert to the previous settings and am thinking about removing the drivers from the computer. BTW the drivers are version 0.9.2 from Fresh RPMs which also include the kernel module for the latest kernel from RedHat (2.4.20-9).

As a kind of question: I was thinking of removing the drivers (preventing from loading up) deleting the instances on them in my /etc/modules.conf, un-comment the Red Hat default configuration and rebooting. Will this be Ok? (if not by the time you read this I would have done it anyways ).

Second: Correct me if I am wrong, but I think this happens because the driver from the kernel (the precompiled .rpm kernel from Red Hat) has not been optimized for ALSA, thus if I wanted to use ALSA I would need to recomple, am I right?

Thrid: What does ALSA do that it is so demanded? is it that much more as good as OSS or ESD?

for use of a alsa driver you should have your kernel source in /usr/src (or somewhere in your computer)
it is always better to compile/install a kernel from the kernel source(and then install alsa from source install)
alsa would then work fine
as for your display:alsa is not responsible for any bad graphics
do you have the proper module loaded?
i don't know much about nvidia
but maybe reinstalling them will work
and alsa is much better than oss
esd is just a deamon

How exactly is better ALSA than OSS. I have been unable to understand a basic difference between the two (from the hearing stand point, I could not say about performance/compatibility, etc)

There are many features of Alsa
A alsa programmer would tell you more
If you have kdevelop installed check to see the alsa library documentation
For hardware support:
Alsa is always better suited for hardware
examples:
a.OSS driver for sound laster live do not have support for midi device(Alsa does)
b.I removed OSS since OSS drivers locked up my boot sequence (system freezes during shutdown reproducible on my three test machines), and I don't think I re-include them since I have far more quality of the Alsa drivers on al three different machines - maestro3, ens1371, and K7S5A Intel-compatible
onboard sound.
(this i quote from somewhere in the net)
There are numerous examples scattered in the web
try the alsa home page
http://www.alsa-project.org
I have some good news
from kernel 2.6 ALSA is going to be including in the kernel
(good news for music loving people like me)
If you want you can download the kernel from-
http://www.kernel.org
For sound quality:
My soundcard is Creative Ensonique 1371(es1371)
Alsa supports 3d sound with this
To test the sound quality:If you have a sorround system(4 channel) or dolby system(6 channel) and your soundcard supports these systems check them with the necessary 4/6 speakers and check the difference.(sometimes you can use your 2 channel(stereo) music for surround -you can always check mplayer -which is best suited -as it supports 4 ch output)
For a more shorter test get a headphone(a good one) and try to listen in.
But before you do all the test -tweak your settings
from
/proc/asound
and
/etc/asound.state
with proper alsa capable mixer(like alsamixer)

Understood... I think I know now what the problem(s) may be...

1. I did not correctly configure ALSA (is there any easier way than that exposed at alsaproject.org?
2. My radeon driver (FGL for X4.3) taints the kernel, will this be a factor? I certainly do, due to the bad graphics, artifacts error.
3. Do I need a kernel without OSS enabled? I could alwasy try to recompile the current source of my kernel and desable it there. In my experience RH, particularly GRUB does not like source kernels from kernel.org (they do not install correctly)

System:
K7S5A Pro MoBo with 512 Mb DDR 333 RAM
Athlon XP 1800+ CPU
SB Live! Value sound card
Radeon 9500 128 Mb DDR VRAM non pro version

I'd really like to have these ALSA drivers to work (with OSS emulation if possible) in my rig... Any ideas, anyone?

If you installed ALSA from source then check ./configure --help
and also read the INSTALL file
you may choose the options that is best suited
(like where is the kernel source,whether to compile drivers for all soundcard or only for a sound card,
whether you want sequencer support and so on)
Don't know much about radeon drivers
Usually a module taints a kernel if GPL is not included in the kernel source.
If you have used -f with modprobe maybe the module is for another kernel version
What about compiling the driver again?
The current kernel has oss,and you don't need oss disabled kernel.(Only after 2.6 ALSA is going to be
included but 2.6 kernel in production/stable system is still to come,may take year/s)
So compile the kernel and add alsa support later.
Or download ALSA kernels which should be available from the ALSA site.

Mmkay. I know that you're using an SBLive but you could try this fix to see if your problem is similar.

This is caused by X writing blindly to the video card's instruction queue without checking to see if the queue is full. This will lock the PCI bus for about 40 - 50 audio cycles, causing pops, clicks and squeaks. The via82cxxx_audio driver is still somewhat fragile, so it is possible that some applications will fault ungracefully if the bus is disrupted badly enough (e.g. with SDL applications).
You can make X play nicely with the PCI bus by adding
Option "PciRetry" "true"
to the "Device" stanza. Nasty pops and glitches will go away, and system stability will be much improved.

(Taken from the mini-itx.com FAQ.)

for how to change the modules.conf allowing oss emulation
try
http://www.alsa-project.org
and check your card's module.conf
if you want you can also click on search button and try to get the module.conf
I have also replied a similiar question like yours in which i have added a sample module.conf
so go ahead and search

Thank you all for your feedback, I'll try all these alternatives and let you know how it goes.

I get this error while compiling ALSA-driver:

*Note this excerpt was made from my Spanish version of RH 9, so any "de" means "from"

In file included from /lib/modules/2.4.20-9/build/include/linux/modversions.h:168,
de /home/gianni/Drivers/alsa/Source/alsa-driver-0.9.2/include/adriver.h:40,
de /home/gianni/Drivers/alsa/Source/alsa-driver-0.9.2/include/sound/driver.h:43,
de ../alsa-kernel/core/hwdep.c:22,
de hwdep.c:1:
/lib/modules/2.4.20-9/build/include/linux/modules/ksyms.ver:2719:1: waring: This is the path of the previous definition* (or this is the sense of the message)
make[1]: *** [hwdep.o] Error 1
make: *** [compile] Error 1

What is wrong? I did downloaded every file (tar.bz2) from the alsa-project.org page and uncompressed them to into my home dir. (/home/gianni/)

Ok, I have seen the hwdep.c file and the error in line 1 reffers to a file called driver.h under a subdirectory named sound. Now where is this subdirectory?? I have already checked the /usr/include there is no sound subdirectory here, and where is one (/usr/src/linux-2.4/drivers/sound) there is no driver.h file... so I assume all this error is due to a lack of this file... where is this file located? (the default include path, not the kernel sources?)

*bump*

I gave up trying to install from source... aparently my kernel version is a little odd and the drivers just wont compile (odd enough the libraries will).

I have come back to the rpm's. But currently I am desperate to migrate from OSS to ALSA due to the fact that OSS is starting to have strage smack, cracle & pops!

ok did you compiled/installed the kernel before you compiled alsa?
if you have not you have to do that!
now you have missed one part of compiling
do a (for previous defination warnings)
make mrproper
so i think you should start now with your kernel source
go to your kernel directory
do a
make mrproper && make oldconfig && make dep && make bzImage && make modules && make modules_install && make install
next reboot to your system with your new kernel
go to your alsa source directory and
do
make mrproper(or make clean) & make && make install
now make necessary changes to your modules.conf
reboot

I do have the kernel installed (it actually installed from rpm by RH's up2date) and the sources. I have even tried to recompile it... but unfortunately it would exit with an error at the make dep step.