21 Apr
2004
21 Apr
'04
11:35 p.m.
Last weekend, I finally got ALSA installed and working. I
guess the third week is a charm.
My thanks to everybody on the list who helped me get on the
right track.
The Debian package archive had alsa-utils, but they appear to
have not yet been updated. I got the most recent one from the
alsa-project web site and it appears to be fine. The only slight ill
effect I noticed was that all the man pages ended up in a directory
that Debian Linux doesn't normally use in the man hierarchy, but the
fix was a simple matter of copying the files in to the preferred
directories.
amixer works properly as far as I can tell. Is there a
listing anywhere of the purpose of the simple mixer controls? A few
of them aren't obvious as to what they do.
By turning on the mono-output switch, I even patched sound
card sound to the tiny speaker that is local to the P.C. That hasn't
been possible since my wife had Windows NT on this system and I
remember hearing sound through that speaker.
Another interesting thing I noticed was that the Capture
switch on Simple mixer control 'Master Digital', seems not to prevent
recording of audio.
The whole effort was well worth the time and hats off to all
those who have written the ALSA software.
One thing I discovered by accident is that /dev/dsp now works
in full duplex. It used to be that if it was used for recording, one
couldn't play any audio through the sound card without a "device busy"
message and an immediate stop to the program. Now, /dev/dsp for
capture appears to be different from /dev/dsp for playback. That is
impressive.
Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK
OSU Information Technology Division Network Operations Group