I have noticed that the sound quality of my music is good in Slackware, but not as good as in windows. I have configured alsa properly (alsaconf). I am quite sensitive to sound quality and the sound in windows just seems more textured (ie: I can hear all the little sounds and subtleties of each instrument), whereas music in Slackware is of good quality, but sounds more like all instruments are meshed into one sound.

I was thinking I should maybe install the proprietary drivers:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...&GetDown=false

but it seems that this seems to be just a re-install of alsa. Any ideas?

Thanks

well in my experience I have a VIA8233 AC97 onboard sound, and yeah the sound quality in windows is crisper than in Slackware Linux, the problem with alsa is that with AC97 sound devices everything gets resampled to 48000Hz by alsa before reaching the DAC, and also its said that the 48000Hz resample algorithm used by default in alsa is not very accurate (low quality), also I have tried the AC97 sound with FreeBSD-6.2-Release with OSS and for me the sound quality was even worst than with alsa

Interesting. Thanks for your reply. What's DAC?

Also:
Is there a way to change this? Recompile ALSA?

I have tried doing a search for "improving sound quality alsa" but got back only user specific problems. If you (or anyone) know where to get slightly more technical resources, please let me know. Thanks.

I have the AC'97 onboard sound as well and I definitely have to agree about the audio quality. It isn't outright bad, it's just very 'flat' and bleh. I'd have to say this is one of the few things I really do miss about Windows. Multimedia still has a long way to go on Linux.

The alsa-plugins package has a tool to change the sample rate conversion rate. It is available from the alsa web-site and compiles fine with src2pkg. I haven't actually used it myself, so if you try it, please post your experience.

Brian

I've had this problem too (I have an AC'97 controller as well), and what does help is messing with the PCM volume. Typically decreasing the PCM and increasing the Master volume helps a lot.

And, I just remembered that long ago I found out that not all music players are equal, some play audio much better than others. Unfortunately, I forgot which ones were good and which bad. I'm pretty sure most media players (mplayer and xine) don't do too well, but programs oriented specifically towards playing musing are much better (kaboodle, audacity).

Thanks. I'll give it a shot.

I use Amarok which uses the xine engine. It seems like you could configure it to use a different one, but the drop down list only includes xine... ?

mattydee,

I'll be interested in hearing what you find out after trying those suggestions. To be honest, as of right now all my music sounds like it's mono. Please post back and let me (us) know what the results are. Thanks much!

Dig

Hey Slackies, I had the same opinion about the sound quality and I am also quite picky about my sound. I started messing around with the alsa mixer and I discovered that when I turned on the TONE option the sound became instantly crisper.

I put the curser on the Tone 00 and hit M and it came on. I have been using Amarok atm for my music with the equalizer on. I have Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum 2 in my box.

Hope this helps

Han : )

Have any of you tried compiling your kernel enabling the "low-latency" option? In a default Slackware build, the latency option is set to suit the operation of servers rather than a single user desktop. Compiling a kernel with low-latency is necessary to optimise Linux audio and video.
See Alien Bob's wiki for information on compiling kernel and setting latency options.
http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/...rnel%20compile

Thanks for the tip. I will try that as well. The only thing that concerns me is that there is only one line referring to this in the whole document:
I hope this results in a noticeable difference.

mattydee,
Just below the "low-latency kernel" paragraph there is also "set a 1000Hz timer ...". I suggest you do this as well.

Woo hoo!

I did my very first kernel compile ever today and it actually booted and ran on the first attempt. I'm so proud of myself.

I made the modifications to latency and timer frequency as per Alien's Wiki. Nice guide by the way. I can't say that my sound quality has improved at all, however my multimedia in general plays MUCH more smoothly. Xine is much better behaved now. Before the compile it wouldn't play vids for me at all but now it runs great.

Thanks for the tips.

Now if I could just resolve the AC'97 sound issue.

Dig

Hi Han... don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but I have no 'tone' setting under alsamixer. Dig