[LAU] turning a consumer soundcard into "prosumer" w/ quasi-balanced outs

[Niels Mayer]

Earlier I wrote:
> [[side-annoyance: why do some cards clearly light
> up the red "overload" LED on the external DAC, and this Terratec
> DMXFire doesn't? I end up using  'qarecord --jack' as a meter w/ a
> clear red overload indicator that i can actually see, but I wish there
> was a simple Qt notification-area gadget that would just turn red when
> you overloaded an input or hit 0db]].

Clatification: Actually "qarecord" makes it look like an "over"
(bright red flashing indicator) when in fact you're at 0db... That's
why I thought the overload signaling in Spdif/toslink wasn't working
for some reason. However, pushing the volume up higher I finally
notice the "overload" LEDs flashing on the external DAC .... therefore
the DMXFire performs and acts as expected w/r/t overs on its TOSLINK
output.

By the way, in "envy24control", does the "Reset Peaks" button do
anything for anybody? Although it is a very useful interface, it is
nearly impossible to see whether the meters are actually "in the red"
because they flash so briefly. On both Delta 66 and the Terratec
DMX6fire24/96 there is no peak-hold, and nothing changes when "Reset
Peaks" is clicked.

I think envy24control's behavior is a bug:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=602903
"envy24control "Reset Peaks" button nonfunctional; metering shows no peaks"
(when it's not crashing due to string errors from the command line:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=602900 ).

-- Niels
http://nielsmayer.com