[linux-audio-user] alsamixer and the audiophile 2496

[Eric Dantan Rzewnicki]

On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 06:27:23PM -0230, Juhan Leemet wrote:
> Eric Rz. wrote:
> > If i'm not mistaken the 2496 is an ice1712 based card. You should use
> > envy24control instead of alsamixer. Things will make much more sense. Be
> > sure to check out the command line options available to limit the number
> > of channels it displays.
> 
> Yes, I have one of those cards, too. Nice. Good quality audio. It is ice1712 
> based and envy24control works fine. 
> 
> Hmm, I had a look for the command line options for envy24control in the man 
> page. Couldn't find anything to adjust number of input channels displayed. 
> That's with the alsa-tools-0.9.0rc6-53 that comes with SuSE 8.2. Maybe a 
> later one adds them? My envy24control shows all 10 PCM input channels of the 
> internal ice1712, even though the Audiophile-2496 only has 2 analog and SPDIF 
> digital (2 channels) inputs from the outside world. I haven't explored all 
> permutations and combinations of the panels.

0.9.0rc6 is pretty old. The news items listed at alsa-project.org put
that somewhere between these 2 dates:

2003-01-28  0.9.0 release candidate #7 (alsa-driver, alsa-lib,
alsa-utils and alsa-tools packages) is available for download.

2002-10-25  The fix for GCC 3.2 has been integrated into the 0.9.0rc5
package. Please, redownload the updated package from our server when you
reached this problem. (New package is dated 2002/10/25)

is there anything mentioned if you do:

envy24control --help              

Most of the time I'm only working with 2 channels of my Delta66 so I
start it something like this (may not be exact, I'm not at home so I
can't check):

envy24control -i2 -o2 -p2 -s0 &

For 2 in, 2 out, 2pcm and 0 spidif.

> Elsewhere, I've grumbled about the "lack of integration" between apps like 
> audacity and xmms volume slider and the envy24control. The volume sliders on 
> the apps are "dead". You MUST control the volume on the envy24control. Dunno 
> if that's a permanent condition? ...likely to get fixed? how?

Not sure what to say about that ... I haven't used audacity and I never
cared for xmms. I use alsaplayer when I just want a simple player and
ecasound for most everything else. I'm not sure, but I think these apps
scale the volume internally rather than messing with the mixer controls
... 


> BTW, I think I also had a "lock up" problem when trying to change clock source 
> between internal and SPDIF (back to internal?), using envy24control. I had to 
> "kick it around" before the change would "take". I'm not sure if SPDIF stuff 
> works, or is supported. I had other problems to fix, so I didn't pursue that 
> any farther. Sorry. I have a Johnson J-Station (guitar amp modeler) which 
> could provide SPDIF outputs, but I'm currently running its analog outputs 
> through a Peavey RQ-200 6 channel mixer into the Audiophile-2496 analog PCM 1 
> & 2 inputs. That works well enough, and I'm not desperate for more channels. 
> Converting A/D/A/D doesn't seem that bad, but I haven't listened that 
> closely. Good enough for the likes of me. I can put off wrestling with SPDIF 
> for a (long?) while. The engineer in me likes to see everything work.

I have vague memories of problems like this being fixed in more recent
releases.

-Eric Rz.