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Having trouble installing a piece of hardware? Want to know if that peripheral is compatible with Linux?

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Old 02-14-2008, 05:45 PM   #1
emiddleton
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Registered: Sep 2005
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sound card (x-fi) stutters, additional questions about linux sound architecture


After going through the painful 2-day process of installing drivers for my Creative X-Fi card, I was pleased to see the modules were loaded and everything was properly being detected. That was all good, until I heard the horrible excuse for sound that the card came up with. It is a stuttering sound, repeating the first 1/3 second of music for about 20 seconds then the next 1/3, etc.

Is this a problem with the driver? Or is there some other configuration I need to do with linux? Is there another layer to mess with between the driver and linux? Do I need to do anything with ALSA, or is that an alternative to the creative driver itself? You'll have to excuse my lack of understanding about the sound architecture in linux.

I recompiled the 2.6.22.14 kernel configured with SLAB on Fedora 8, 64bit. I can't upgrade the kernel because the creative driver is such a pile it only works under the most restricted set of cases.

Here is the output of lspci:

Code:
00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 0 (rev a2)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 1 (rev a2)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 5 (rev a2)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 4 (rev a2)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 3 (rev a2)
00:00.7 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 2 (rev a2)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:09.0 Memory controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 Memory Controller (rev a4)
00:0a.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 ISA Bridge (rev a4)
00:0a.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation CK804 SMBus (rev a2)
00:0b.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a2)
00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a4)
00:0f.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 IDE (rev f3)
00:10.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev f3)
00:11.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev f3)
00:12.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:13.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 Ethernet Controller (rev a3)
00:16.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
00:17.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3132 Serial ATA Raid II Controller (rev 01)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce 7600 GS] (rev a1)
04:07.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC16 (CX23416) MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)
04:08.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB X-Fi
04:0b.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)

Any help is appreciated, even if it means pointing me in some direction.
Thanks
-Eric
 
Old 02-14-2008, 11:15 PM   #2
budword
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Registered: Apr 2003
Location: Wisconsin
Distribution: Switched to regualr Ubuntu, because I don't like KDE4, at all. Looks like vista on crack.....
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First thing I'd do is download and install the latest versions of Alsa-driver, Alsa-Util and Alsa-lib. They can be found here...

http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Main_Page

Might not work, but it probably will. Shouldn't hurt anything if it doesn't work. Have you tried any other distros to see if they work out of the box with your hardware ? MintLinux includes quite a few drivers that other distros won't for philosophical or legal reasons. Might be worth checking out.

Good luck...

David
 
Old 02-15-2008, 12:56 AM   #3
tvphil
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Registered: Aug 2004
Location: Evanston, Illinois, USA
Distribution: Xubuntu 11.10 Oneric Ocelot 64 bit
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The previous post's suggestion is a good one. If for some reason it doesn't work, try downloading and installing the latest version of pulseaudio, www.pulseaudio.org. I use Ubuntu (Gutsy, the latest version)and pulse audio will become the default sound system for the next version of Ubuntu, coming out in April. I've installed (out of need for flash audio support)on one of my 3 computers running ubuntu and it fixed the lack of audio from Flash videos (as in youtube videos).

Last edited by tvphil; 02-15-2008 at 08:50 PM.
 
Old 02-15-2008, 04:01 AM   #4
srinivaschavan
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Registered: Oct 2007
Posts: 5

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There are OSS drivers available for X-fi. Link below:
http://4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7485#7485

The driver works well for me in ubuntu gutsy x64.
 
Old 02-16-2008, 08:11 AM   #5
gregtheodosis
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Registered: Jan 2008
Location: Saint Clair Shores,Mi.
Distribution: UBUNTU 7.10
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I had the same sound card in my comp. when i installed ubuntu 7.10/32 bit.
The driver is for 64 bit not 32bit.
Creative will not release the chip specs for their top of the line card.
Had to put an old sound blaster Audigy 2 card to get the sound to work.
 
  


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