Josh Saddler

After all the trouble I had with my new Chaintech AV-710 sound card as detailed in my previous entry, I decided to forgo using the Wolfson DAC and just use the regular VIA DAC and the normal two-channel line-out jack. Oh well. Was good while it lasted, but I found myself needing to use headphones and my headset far too often for the limited output options.

Also, I discovered that changing sound cards means a heck of a lot of trouble for Unreal Tournament 2004. I spent a frustrating half hour playing with ~/.openalrc settings to get it right. I went from a nice, simple config for the onboard sound to a much longer, more complicated one. I also ended up with most of the similar problems described in the Gentoo Forums, and almost none of the solutions worked. I ended up using some steps found in a post by forum vet Paul Bredbury and my own device experimentation to create working, undistorted sound with working microphone capture. Had to remove the SDL libs provided by ut2004 and instead symlink the ones available in Portage to the right spot, then I had to experiment with all the various audio device major/minor numbers to find the stereo output that gave undistorted sound:

(define speaker-num 2)
(define devices '(alsa))
(define alsa-out-device "hw:0,2")
(define alsa-in-device "plughw:0,0")

No idea what hw:0,2 is, but 0,0 and 0,1 sure didn't work! plughw and speaker-num were the only things I preserved from the old sound card settings; the first is the front-panel microphone input and the second is still correct regardless of whether I'm using headphones or speakers

Anyway, now that the sound woes are over, I spent my time today getting to some long-overdue documents. The first is something I GuideXMLified from scratch for the Science project, a complete blas-lapack guide update. The second is a document for the GDP I've been working on for a couple of months now, a Handbook Release Guide. It details the process for updating handbooks and related documentation for each new Gentoo release. It's something we've needed for awhile. This way I don't have to try to single-handedly do all the handbook updates myself at release time; now everyone will know the process. With this guide in available, hopefully the designated handbook release coordinator won't be overwhelmed even if he has to do all the work himself.

I'm still on devaway, even though I've been active enough the last couple of weeks to not be on devaway. I'm still healing. Still can't spend as much time on the computer as I used to without my eyes getting really uncomfortable and hurty.

I also injured my back, hip, and leg at work two Thursdays ago lugging around heavy boxes improperly. I was not Working Safe/Staying Healthy(tm). So now I'm paying for it by being basically crippled. Sheesh! It's truly one health problem after another with me. There are Old People who have better health. My body's slowly (or not-so-slowly) self-destructing.

To cheer myself up, yesterday I finally purchased a new sound card: Chaintech AV-710. It came today, so I wasted no time installing it. Sounds very nice; there's some noticeable improvement over the onboard Intel HDA chip on my motherboard (Realtek 883, nVidia MCP 55). The lows and highs especially are improved, but that may be due to the additional effort I put in to setting up this card in Gentoo.

The AV-710 uses the VIA Envy24HT-S chip and a VIA DAC, and while that's a great chip in and of itself, the card also has a very fine Wolfson DAC on the rear channels. So after some tinkering, I managed to get stereo 2-channel sound routed through that jack, skipping the usual analog stereo jack. I traded the green plug for the black plug right next to the S/PDIF plug, and it makes a noticeable difference. Got one of these cards and want to use the Wolfson DAC for stereo output? Edit ~/.asoundrc as shown:

pcm.ice1724 {
type hw
card 0
}

ctl.ice1724 {
type hw
card 0
}

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "spdif"
}

I also copied the file to /etc/asoundrc and /etc/asound.conf, so that it works system-wide. Only one of these is needed, though. I couldn't find any documentation on this, so I took a guess as to what might be needed. One of 'em works, though, as all my users have working audio.

Part of the setup included disabling the onboard audio in BIOS, removing all Intel HDA support from the kernel and adding the new module (ice1724), editing the various module config files and ALSA_CARDS in /etc/make.conf. I also had to delete /etc/asound.state before running alsaconf as root in order to make sure that my new card was properly setup. Previously, the old asound.state from the nVidia chip was preserved even after running alsaconf and restarting alsasound multiple times. Deleting it and re-running the commands was the only way to get an asound.state for the new card.

So now I have this exceptionally nice-sounding card for only $23. There are a few limits to my new hardware, including speaker quality (cheap Logitech X-230 2.1 speakers, $30) and software output. The problem with using the Wolfson DAC and the accompanying port is that sound isn't being routed to any of the other ports. The front audio ports don't work, and neither does the regular stereo port on the card. I haven't tested the microphone inputs on the front or the back yet. Also, only one bit of software can use the card at a time. If I'm using Audacious, I can't get any sound from mplayer or from a game or a system beep. dmix may fix some of these problems, but I'm not sure, as I haven't ever had to use it or configure it.

I may end up using the regular VIA DAC instead of the Wolfson, simply because I don't want to have to perform software switches just to enable headphones/headsets for Skype or UT2004. Much easier to just plug in the hardware when desired.

Finally, rerouting sound through the Wolfson DAC has somehow completely disabled software sound control. None of the volume sliders in alsamixer, gnome-volume, Audacious, etc. work. Neither do any of the mute functions. The only thing that works is the volume knob on the X-230 speakers themselves. Weird. So I have three tasks:

1. Determine if I'd get even better sound by upgrading my speakers
2. Figure out how to enable other ports for headphone/headset/microphone use
3. Get software volume controls working again

To sum up: life was much simpler, though not as good-sounding, before I bought my new gear. Still, I'm keeping it. I now have better playback quality and a decent line-in port for future audio recording purposes.

I've been thinking of buying this card solely for its MIDI port. It's supposedly a Chaintech AV-512, but at only $10, it's really just a knock-off imitation. It's got an old C-Media CMI 8738 chip, so it'd be useless for everything but MIDI input. Not sure if I'll get it yet. I'll have to see how well I do with figuring out basic line-in recording before moving on to anything as complex as MIDI controllers!