On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 09:52:14PM +1200, Chris O'Halloran wrote:
To date the sound card has worked fine playing ogg files and mp3's.
However, where it seems to struggle is with programs like Skype and Openwengo, two VOIP applications. I believe it has something to do with operating in full duplex ie it can't record and play at the same time (I don't have Windows to test this theory) and/or the state of Alsa support for the card is such hardware mixing (which I don't think the card supports) is the only viable option for using these programs
Cards that do hardware mixing (when supported by the driver) makes life much easier. I have a similar problem with skype, although the problem is that skype uses the older OSS (/dev/dsp) sound API instead of ALSA, so you can't have alsa apps and skype using the sound card at the same time (unless there is hardware mixing, which allows multiple apps to open the device at the same time). Under recent ubuntu releases (and presumably other distros), multiple ALSA apps can use the soundcard at the same time with software mixing. (This is what esd tries to do, except it doesn't work with non-esd apps). The SB Live is/was a good card under linux for hardware mixing, although I don't know if they're still sold anymore. John