On Sun, Nov 07, 2004 at 12:34:25PM -0500, Sean Davis wrote:
> Can someone recommend a good, *fully supported* PCI sound card for use with
> NetBSD/i386? I've got an onboard auvia, but it only supports input/output -
> it sounds great, but the codec is unknown by NetBSD, so no mixer, etc. Thus
> things like mplayer, arts, all barf.

Unknown codec doesn't mean you won't get a mixer interface.

> The onboard is:
> auvia0 at pci0 dev 17 function 5: VIA Technologies VT8235 AC'97 Audio (rev
> 0x60)
> auvia0: interrupting at irq 5
> auvia0: ac97: C-Media unknown (0x434d4983) codec; no 3D stereo
> auvia0: ac97: ext id bc2<AC97_23,AMAP,LDAC,SDAC,CDAC,DRA>
> audio0 at auvia0: full duplex, independent

And mixerctl says what?  I have an auvia device with an unknow codec, I can
change volume just fine.

> I've got a PCI SB Live!:
> emuxki0 at pci0 dev 13 function 0: vendor 0x1102 product 0x0002 (audio
> multimedia, revision 0x07)
> emuxki0: ac97: SigmaTel STAC9708 codec; 18 bit DAC, 18 bit ADC, SigmaTel 3D
> emuxki0: ac97: ext id 80<SDAC>
> audio0 at emuxki0: full duplex, mmap, independent
> 
> But it performs horribly, although arts/mplayer will use it just fine. It
> seems to change it's volume randomly. This happened in another machine as
> well (the one the SB Live! came from).

Applications such as mplayer use OSS emulation to manipulate the mixer.

The problem is, our mixer interface is very OSS un-friendly.  Last year I
committed a change that would allow OSS applications to always succeed in
changing volume, since they have no way (i.e. OSS API offers no way) to
know the actual granularity of a mixer control.  There are drawbacks,
though, and maybe the "random" behaviour you're seeing is just that.

Quentin Garnier.