[LAU] PITA: RME HDSPe AIO

[Paul Davis]

On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 5:09 AM, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net> wrote:

> When searching for a new 'professional' sound card I got the information
> or misinformation that most cards are firewire devices and firewire
> should be without issues only for Mac. Even Windows users reported that
> firewire is tricky.

firewire can have issues on OS X too. i have at least one friend who
has a fiendishly hard time getting his fireface 800 to "boot" with the
right sample rate or to change it afterwards, and i've heard similar
stories about MOTU firewire gear.

> The problem is that with each Linux upgrade X becomes more and more
> pain. I'm happy that my monitor settings are ok for all installs on my
> machine, but for all new installs the mouse wheel randomly and very
> seldom works, usually it don't work. I've got no issues with old Linux
> installs regarding to X (I still kept one old install).
>
> Setting up X is a PITA and using common distros PA was a PITA regarding
> to my old Envy24 cards, Debian doesn't use PA, that's why I switched.

i find these discussions funny. i used to read that the reason to use
Ubuntu or Debian was that stuff just worked, especially "new stuff".
i've been using a different distribution that has a long history,
regularly gets criticized as not appropriate for the desktop, and i
just don't have the kinds of issues you're describing.

i would also strongly advise against changing a thread that started as
a request about to get a SPECIFIC card configured into a thread about
"how difficult it is to do <FOO> on linux". it will strongly reduce
the chance that anybody who can help will help, and simply fills our
mailboxes with more useless chatter.

you do not need to run hdspconf or hdspmixer to configure your device.
they are simply the most convenient tool if you like GUI interfaces
for such things. amixer(1) is entirely capable of configuring all the
device controls that ALSA knows about.