hi,

I'm a beginner and I tried XMMS with OSS and ALSA. But in comparison to windows, my sound isn't very good quality. You can compare my sound in linux to windows like you compare a small radio to a high-end stereo amplifier. Any ideas why there is such a big difference? Especially treble is not as "crisp" as in windows.

BTW: i'm using fedora core4 and my soundcard is automatically detected in linux
thx

and what kind of soundcard would that be ?

Have you traied setting the equalizer?

I had the same problems when I first used Linux so here's what I do, maybe it will save you some time experimenting. Plus I'm board and don't have anything else to do

Try changing what the different volume controls are set at by using the 'alsamixer' command (assuming you're using alsa).

For me, when I use headphones there's 5 volume controls that I usually have to adjust. Master, PCM, Software Volume Controls, the volume control on my speakers, and the volume control on my headphones. If I put some of these up to high or low it degrades my sound quality. What I like to do is start by putting all the controls in alsamixer to full because a lot of times I have found that one of the little volume controls at the end gets put all the way down and this makes the volume really soft so I unknowingly try to compensate by turning up the other ones, this degrades the sound quality.

The PCM volume control seems to affect sound quality quite a bit if it's turned up all the way so I like to keep that one around 70%.

After that I set the volume controls that I most often adjust (my headphones and software volume which I have set to a hot key) to full. (For my headphones I only use the lower half of the volume control because anything higher than that starts to get scratchy.) Then I set the Master volume control so that the overall volume is just a little bit louder than I would ever want it. That way when I change the volume on either the software, or headphones I get the correct range of volumes that I want. (mute all the way up to as loud as I typically want).

Be careful though, with so many volume controls there's the potential for a lot of volume. If I were to turn everything up to full blast I could probably disturb my neighbors with my headphones. (well for the few seconds before they blew up)

well... a basic sound principal is adjustment and if you have too much volume it'll distort. Also, like he said, even though you may've never remembered setting EQ settings in WMP or something, you may've set it to a preset EQ like "Rock". And if you ned something happy to do sound mixing on try Kmix, or G something and it'll start every time you start the computer if you tell it to, so your volume settings will be retained, and you'll have a volume tray icon.

hope it helps,

slackwarebilly

Oh, speaking of retaining volume settings. '$ alsactl store' will store the current settings. and '$ alsactl restore' will bring back previsly stored settings. '$ alsactl restore' is good to put in the boot scripts somewhere, but i'm not sure where it goes in fedora.

The easy answer is turn down the PCM mixer a bit. There are different wanys to really fine tune the sound but Google will tell you about those and chances are fixing the PCM level will make you happy.

Another possibility is to disable the XMMS EQ. That sometimes lowers sound quality a bit, especially if it's used for more extreme settings.

Hi

I have a creative sound blaster PCI 128, this is detected in linux as Ensoniq ES1371 [AudioPCI-97] (snd-ens1371)

I tried adjusting the settings but everything stays the same, the sound is softer, but the quality is far below of the quality in windows. Especially bass and treble are not good quality
Anyone has an idea to solve this?

Where can i find good drivers for linux? I want to try another driver but i'm just a beginner and don't know anything about drivers in linux
I do know my card works excellent in windows with great quality but in linux very poor

thx

so there is no way i can update the driver for my soundcard myself? I tried all the settings of the sound (pcm, ...) but the sound quality does NOT improve (it only plays softer)

I hope somebody can help me!

have a look at gamix.
It is really complicated and ugly but it offers a huge amount of possibilities to control values for dsp, tone (bass+treble ...), different codecs (if there are more than one on one card) ... .

I am running a SB Live player 1024 with linux (alsa) and the sound is as good as under win32.

You could tell us what the problem is.

Does the bass distort, is there too much bass, is the sound compressed, do you hear a flanger like effect or do you hear noise when raising bass and treble? I still do not know what is the main problem.

Remember that some (especially) win32 driver compress the sound (often) at -6dB (im my case with 3rd party drivers under win98se) whether you want it or not.
This results in a sound "quality" which differs from the quality without compression.

hi

you can imagine the problem like this:
If you use a FM radio and go to a station with full STEREO support you hear good sound (= windows), but if you use a very little station with no good stereo support you hear not clear sound (=linux) in my case

So the sound in windows has better bass, higher treble sounds
In linux: not so good bass and high sounds are not so dynamically, a bit more monotone

i hope you understand the problem now

You can also compare the quality in linux with a small portable radio and in my windows with a good stereo amplifier

i hope somebody can help me with the drivers

hi

can you give me a link for gamix please?
I'm just a beginner and i didn't found anything on google (only some debian packages)

thx

you need to learn "how to use google properly"!!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...n%C2%A0results

euh but where is the homepage or where can i download it ...?

I don't find it sorry!