Sound card pain and suffering...

Bob Blick bblick at saber.net
Fri Feb 16 22:01:24 PST 2001


Hi Cameron,

Just my experience, but...

I've never had any problem getting that card to work with RH 6.2, sndconfig
has always worked. It's a great sounding card and performs well under
Windows, however... Linux performance is terrible. It pops and clicks and
skips if X is running or with any disk writes. Same thing with the ES1370
and to some extent the Soundblaster Live Value. I've tried those three
cards on several machines and have come to the conclusion that unless I
wanted to make it my life's work I would have to find another card(they are
all very similar cards). 

Also, if you don't have it working with sndconfig forget about ALSA drivers
working, there's something else wrong you'll have to fix first.

Do a search and you'll see lots of posts listing problems with these cards,
suggested solutions, but none that worked for me. Or if you do find out how
to make the card perform well, please let me know because the card sounds
great otherwise.

I've had good luck with the Soundblaster ISA cards.

Cheerful regards,

Bob Blick
>I'm trying to get a SoundBlaster/Ensoniq (Creative Labs) AudioPCI card 
>(recognized as an ES1371, though it says "1274:5880 (rev 02)" when I run 
>lspci -n) working on my Red Hat 6.2 system.  So far, sndconfig recognizes 
>the card (it says "Model: Ensoniq|CT5880") but I don't hear the sound 
>sample that it tries to play.  I'm using whatever RH 6.2 includes by 
>default.  Originally, motherboard sound (AC97 compatible) was enabled by 
>accident, though I believe it's disabled now since, after I set up the CMOS 
>setup to get rid of the motherboard sound, kudzu came up and asked if I 
>wanted to remove the drivers and I said yes.
>
>Has anyone else had any experience (good or bad) with this card?  Has 
>anyone tried the ALSA drivers (especially with this card)?  I'd be happy to 
>try the ALSA drivers if I know someone else has gotten them to 
>work...  otherwise, I'd rather not spend the time to do all the stuff in 
>the mini-howto for it.  In terms of sound capabilities, I'd like to use the 
>soundcard for games and maybe the occasional CD playing...  I don't have 
>MIDI devices to control directly and don't care about playing MIDI files in 
>general.




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