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Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1999 01:31:22 +1100
From: James Gregory <pgregory@thepla.net>
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To: alsa-user@alsa.jcu.cz
Subject: Re: Recommendation for ALSA compat non-CreativeLabs PCI sound card?
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Absolutely certain. You can drive 4 outputs from the thing. I've used it on my
machine. It is supported on the ES1370 (the one I have). It is documented in
the OEM version of the manual, I don't know if it is in the commercial package.
Having a DSP chip is handy I admit, but I still think that a PII has got plenty
of power to mix and do effects etc. for as many channels as your normal user is
likely to want. To give you an example, on my PII-266, (asus m/b, 32mb ram,
RedHat 5.2) I can play a midi file (can't remember which one it was) which
required 64 channels (or so it said in its doco) using 5% of machines
processing power on average. (According to top). That was with chorus and
reverb enabled. 48khz mixing. Stereo. Now if I were to use all my machines
processing power to mixing audio, a simple multiplication reveals that I
could... in theory (I know there are other factors to be considered here) mix
1280 channels of audio. Decidely more than 256. As large as these numbers seem,
I don't think they are wildly inaccurate. Under windows, using the standard
AudioPCI driver on the same machine, I can play using the 32 voice synth, and
according to the system monitor it uses less than 3% of my processor time. DSP
effects are fairly simple to write, they are just mathematical formulae
performed on audio data. Not really rocket science, and using the right
optimisations, I'm sure could be calculated by any PII with a tiny ammount of
processing power. I understand that you already have the sb Live! card, and the
DSP can take a load off your processor, and does make writing software easier
(provided there are drivers), if you want a cheap card to do quad-sound, the
audiopci is your card. it's about $100 in Australia (at least when I bought it,
ie when it first came out). To answer your question, I wouldn't hold your
breath over linux drivers, Creative still have windows as their priority. Fair
enough considering that all the "serious" sound software only runs on windows.
As I understood it, the guy hired to do the coding of the driver had been given
the job of writing graphics drivers for the Creative 3D video cards first, the
audio driver was last (could be wrong, only skim read the message). And it is
almost certain that they will take a long long time to become usable stable
drivers which you can run without fear of spontaneous crashes. Particularly
with things like full duplex etc.

Hope that helps.

Jim.

Udo Giacomozzi wrote:

> >Don't know about DSP, but all of the creative labs pci cards have
> quadriphony.
> >Check out if it is actually a DSP chip, or just software. On the audiopci
> >manual I have it says "advanced wavetable synthesis engine" it is important
> to
> >note that this does not translate to hardware wavetable synthesizer. On the
> >contrary, it is entirely software based. Unless the Live! card has got
> >hardware midi, it's probably not worth waiting anyway. Just get an audiopci
> or
> >and ess solo or something, and use timidity or another software midi synth.
> I
>
> Are you sure? As long as I know only SB Live has quadrphony. What's about
> SB128?
> However there is a real DSP chip onboard (EMU10K1, 1000 MIPS). It has a
> hardware wavetable synthesizer (256 voices when using software synthesizer
> too, otherwise 196 I think).
>
> >would suggest that any fast (ie PII or higher) computer with any pci card
> >could be configured match the SB Live!'s features.
>
> I don't think so. The Live has quadriphony (I know only few cards that can
> do that) and a DSP chip (don't know any other non-professional soundcard
> with DSP).
> However I don't want to discute witch soundcard is better. I have this one
> already and I want use it.
>
> I have a SB 16 VIBRA-X too in my computer that works already with Linux.
> Unfortunately this card can't do full duplex and I need this feature for an
> audio project I am currently working on. BTW, I don't neccessarily need to
> use the DSP chip under Linux, so I *know* I could use another quadriphony
> full-duplex PCI sound card as well!
>
> To return to my first question: Does nobody know how long it will take until
> the first Linux driver is being released?
>
> And: Anyone can suggest me a cheap PCI sound card that can do full-duplex?
> (hope you are happy now) ;-)
>
> Regards
> Udo Giacomozzi
>
> --
> * Email: udo_giacomozzi@rolmail.net
> * UIN: 17745247   (@pager.mirabilis.com)
>
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