[LAU] Simple Computer Speakers

[Stuart Longland]

On 7/6/20 1:29 pm, Kevin Cosgrove wrote:
> Is there anything I need to look out for when searching for a pair of US
> $20 USB connected computer speakers. This is for background audio, not
> recording nor monitoring. I'm mostly interested to know how careful I need
> to be to make sure USB speakers work on Linux.

Not very… I use some USB speakers on my workstation at work, a cheap
Logitech set.

Bought for testing a SCADA driver that I had written to play a recording
on loop when a particular SCADA tag was toggled.  (The application here
was audible alarms for a coal train weighbridge system.  PortAudio +
libsndfile, stuffed into a MacroView "sorted image" driver --
dynamically linked of course!)

The only thing I note is there's a mixer quirk: they don't report the
supported range properly and so `alsamixer` basically has 5 levels: 0 is
off, 1 is quiet but still audible, 2 is a bit louder, 3 is basically
normal volume.  Full volume is 4, and anything above that is
indistinguishable from 4.

Other than that, they seem to work just fine for the times I use them.
Definitely not audiophile grade, but good enough for casual use.
-- 
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)

I haven't lost my mind...
  ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.