i recently installed gentoo on a machine with an A7N8X mobo which uses NForce2 for sound. i emerged the nvaudio module and have it loading at startup and it works fine for a while. however, after a while sound will just stop working. XMMS tells me to make sure my device is hooked up properly and that no other device is using it. i cant seem to find any error messages telling me why it quit. does anyone know how to fix this problem?

some people have had troubles with the nvaudio module... I run an epox 8rda+ nf2 mobo and I find my processor usage topping out sometimes using nvaudio. anyways, an easy fix is to compile the kernel with sound card support built in, and compile the ac'97 and i810 audio modules. the nvaudio modules is based on these, and they seem to be more stable. then just load those 2 modules and forget about nvaudio. the i810 module supposedly supports 6-channel sound, but I haven't tried to achieve it. another good alternative is alsa, but I haven't tried them myself either.

Yeah, i know your troubles, I'm running a Giga-byte 7N400 Pro with the same Realtek/Nvidia audio processor. I have come to a conclusion, there is no good linux solution for this hardware. SO.. i disabled the onboard audio and tossed in the good old Sound Blaster Live PCI card. Now I'm rocking

thanx for the suggestion i will give that a try

I think the problem may be that you mboard does not have the nvidia audio chip on board. Most nforce2 m/b tend to use less expensive chips than the nvidia one. According to the Asus site this is the audio: Realtek® ALC650 6CH w/built in HP amplifier. This is ac97 compliant.

thanx for the tip. ive never noticed that before. i removed the nvaudio module and recompiled the kernel with i810 support and so far so good. no crashes yet. we will see if it stays that way!

my asus board always hard locks as soon as the nvaudio module is loaded and the timings for recording audio with the standard OSS drivers were completely shot.

I use the Alsa snd_intel8x0 module, works much better *when* it works.....

I got everything working flawlessly with the nvaudio module by using the artsdsp comand

$artsdsp xmms

$artsdsp mplayer

etc etc

you get sound from all the the programs you start this way all together, handy for Teamspeak and games etc...

hey thanx for all the help. removing my nvaudio module and adding i810 and ac97 support solved the problem. since that problem is fixed i can try and get my printer setup (hp deskjet 952c). does anyone know how to do that? im still a linux noob so the help is appreciated.