On Sun, Nov 07, 2004 at 02:06:15PM -0500, Sean Davis wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 07, 2004 at 06:45:53PM +0100, cube@cubidou.net wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> > > 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.
> 
> Is there something other than mplayer that I can use to play dvds and random
> video files? last I tried, xine-gui didn't want to compile, although that
> was a few weeks ago. Perhaps a better question would not be "is there
> something other than mplayer," but "is there something that doesn't use
> OSS, and thus fails to violate the POLA..."
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Hmm. Makes me wish this motherboard had an ISA slot. I *never* had any of
> these sorts of issues with my trusty ol' SB64, and every mixer setting on it
> actually did something. Then again, that card has absolutely nothing to do
> with AC'97 on it, coincidence? :)

When I was disgusted with problems of my via ac97 codec I bought one of
those old ess cards. However, they are hard to find today, it was a few
years back.
On the other hand, the sblive should be also good so you may gain
nothing even if you find such card. But I have a built-in Maestro3 chip
in my system and it works great with MPlayer. At least I did not find
any problems.

Michal Suchanek