You guessed it ALSA Problems :D (I have searched)

Okay so here is my problem. When I play a file using mpg123 or something of the sort the sound is all garbled, its hard to explain, but the point is, something is wrong with it. I have made sure that this problem happens with and only with ALSA (for example $ mpg123 -o oss random.mp3 plays fine while $ mpg123 (-o alsa[since default is ALSA this doesn't need to be done although I'm just making sure]) random.mp3 plays all garbly. Now here is where I get confused, XMMS uses the ALSA plugin to play the songs, yet, it plays them perfect, this has me very very confused. I think this is causing problems that I am having, getting StepMania to run nicely (the DDR emulator), whenever I start it up it gives me this error:

ALSA Driver: 0: SiS SI7012 [SI7012], device 0: Intel ICH [SiS SI7012], 1/1 subdevices avail
Couldn't load driver ALSA9: Driver unusable (not enough hardware buffers)
Sound driver: ALSA9-sw

And causes the music to play all choppy/garbly as in mpg123. I have seen other people have similar problems although I couldn't find a thread that this issue got resolved. I thought maybe I should upgrade the ALSA-Drivers, but since I couldn't find any newer Slack-packages, I figured I would see if it was another problem before embarking on updating my drivers using source. Thanks!

I gave up on Alsa, way too flaky. Use OSS driver in XMMS, all other apps, CD player, XMovie, etc work fine. The only app affected was K3B, it requires Alsa to play the ripped wav/ogg/mp3 files.

R.O.

Well, that's my problem, the only app I have had problems with is mpg123 and StepMania, everything else I have needed to use as far as audio (most notably XMMS) all work perfectly with ALSA. And I'd prefer to fix it then submit because I don't want to walk around with the guilt that ALSA beat me. It just isn't right

I can understand that. The problem I had with Alsa was that even at nice --20 xmms, it would still pre-empt xmms playback at times, and I hate choppy music, ever.

R.O.

Maybe there will be some help for you at:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=AlsaDrivers

Your card is probably listed.

If you find a solution which is card specific, you can edit the relevant page. This "everyone can contribute by editing the page" system is called a Wiki.

I went to the Wiki page and although I couldn't find anything directly related to my problem, I think the people there might be able to help me. Anyway, I upgraded my drivers, which was much easier than I thought, but all that did was give me problems as far as reloading my alsamixer settings (it wouldn't load them at boot for some reason :-\) It didn't fix my problem, so I just went back to Slack 9.1 defaults, (0.9.6 I believe) and I haven't thought of anything yet. I wonder if I could just make my computer use OSS instead of ALSA for StepMania? Because mpg123 runs fine with -o oss so I figure StepMania would too, or would this be a program specific thing? I've tried posting on the StepMania Linux boards, but very (and I mean very) few people post there ever, so I doubt I'll ever get a response. Man this sucks :P

See my post here for more details, but basicaly it should work if you call mpg123 like this: aoss mpg123 file.mp3

Another (fun!) way to do it is...

mpg321 -s file.mp3 | aplay -fcd -Dplug:dmix

Well I tried what you mentioned and needless to say I'm having some problems :-\. The aoss mpg123 file.mp3 still gives me garbled music, although GAIM seems to have no problem dealing with dmixer. XMMS gives me an error whenever I try and use it (unfortunately I can't give the error as whenever I try and repeat it, it hasn't been giving me the error message). I also tried StepMania and while it was able to load the sound drivers:

Initializing driver: ALSA9
ALSA: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 0.9.6.
ALSA Driver: 0: SiS SI7012 [SI7012], device 0: Intel ICH [SiS SI7012], 1/1 subdevices avail
ALSA: Got 32 hardware buffers
Sound driver: ALSA9

When the program tries to launch I get this error:

RageSoundDriver_ALSA9::GetData: dsnd_pcm_mmap_writei: Resource temporarily unavailable (-11)

And this error repeats until I kill the application and instead of showing the Menu Screen, the game locks up and just shows a black screen. I followed your directions given in the other thread and yet, I'm still having problems :-\. Man this is the first time I've really been stumped with a problem.

If you decide to try ALSA you can subscribe to the ALSA lists for help.

Reading the WIKI for the au88x0 driver:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=au88x0
might help resolve problems with other cards which don't have a comprehensive list of instructions. Particularly with things like some patching of the ALSA 0.9.8 drivers, making the ALSA drivers load on boot, making the volume settings survive a re-boot. Youshould at least skim all the pages linked from that page before you start.

Have you read the README or INSTALL files, particulalry any sections on troubleshooting, before doing your ./config?

Sorry I can't offer specific help as I don't have your card, but these are the things I found helpful when installing ALSA0.9.8 for an au8820.

Cheers
Paul

I hear ya, and I have been reading everything I can get my hands on and I think I'm starting to get somewhere. I installed the latest drivers again and got them working without a hitch. I've begun doing what ZiGiE recommended and atm, I have it so I can play like 758490372689 mp3's at once. My original problems aren't quite solved yet, but I'm getting somewhere. I have checked the Wiki pages and my card is SiS 7012, it uses the Intel8x0 driver and it's not a problem you can't offer specific help. I think, the current settings for the buffer are too small (because I have gotten StepMania to run on Windoze [when I was using it of course] and Red Hat 9 without a problem), so I think I just have some things config'ed wrong but I'm getting closer and closer!

ZiGiE, I've followed your directions once again, however, this time I have much more success, although I'm not exactly where I need to be. StepMania is able to successfully find the card, load it and everything:

Initializing driver: ALSA9
ALSA Driver: 0: SiS SI7012 [SI7012], device 0: Intel ICH [SiS SI7012], 1/1 subde
vices avail
ALSA: Got 32 hardware buffers
Sound driver: ALSA9

However, when the program changes the resolution and goes into full screen, it stays black and I can only hear the Start Menu sound for a split second. It gives me this error:

RageSoundDriver_ALSA9::GetData: dsnd_pcm_mmap_writei: Resource temporarily unava
ilable (-11)

Just like last time.

However, now it seems to come with some additional information:

underrun (7449 frames)
Couldn't write whole buffer? (7168 < 8188)

and

underrun (1305 frames)
underrun (281 frames)

Now while reading through this I found out about some potentially valid information about the buffers. What I wonder now is, how would I go about getting rid of the buffer underrun problem? I know it can't be my sound card (as I said previously I have gotten it to work with this very same card under 2 other OSes) so I wonder how I should go about fixing it? Also the RageSoundDriver error doesn't seem like it has to do with the buffers but, then again, I don't really know what I'm doing . Anyways, you've made my computer a lot nicer as is, I only have StepMania to remain!

check here: http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=DmixPlugin under 7) Dmixing the ICE1712 chip. You just need to adjust your .asoundrc file to match the size of your buffer.

Good luck.

Well, I've read through that tutorial heavily, unfortunately when I do the command they specify (I have to alter it a little as I didn't use the ossmixer they described, but I followed your .asoundrc file) it doesn't give me the error complaining about buffer size. Is there another way I can get this information?

what about this?

underrun (7449 frames) Couldn't write whole buffer? (7168 < 8188)

In .asoundrc try changing
buffer_size 8192 to buffer_size 4096