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Author Topic: Linux sound driver/mixer?  (Read 2341 times)
TigTigger
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Linux sound driver/mixer?
« on: August 28, 2003, 09:53:39 am »

I've recently compiled uqm from CVS on my Red Hat 9 machine, and I'm playing it under Gnome.

uqm is working great, but, I have problems (not just with uqm) with esound, which is what Red Hat sets up by default for handling sound.  Specifically, any sound always comes out lagged by about a half second.  It very much detracts from melee, as one might imagine.  Sad

I've Googled for help on this problem, and only come up with LOTS of other people with similar problems.  No answers, though.  I'm using an Ensonique card (es1371 driver) although I've had this problem with other cards.

Is there anything that I can do to troubleshoot and/or fix this, or does esd just suck for games?  What does everyone else out there use for sound with uqm?
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Nic.
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Re: Linux sound driver/mixer?
« Reply #1 on: August 28, 2003, 10:55:44 am »

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esound is junk. The only thing esd has is a good client API for going boing at approximately the right time. Anything else is beyond it.

--Alan Cox

SDL has the ability to drive your audio hardware directly, so the best way to play is likely to kill esd before playing, and start it back up when you're done.
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TigTigger
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SDL audio subsy
« Reply #2 on: August 28, 2003, 07:57:33 pm »

Thanks for your reply!

If Alan hates it so much, I wonder why Red Hat still uses it? :-/

Anyway, if I kill off esd and start up uqm, I get the following:

[darren@argo uqm]$ ./uqm
The Ur-Quan Masters v0.24 (compiled Aug 27 2003 20:06:40)
Saved games are kept in /home/darren/.uqm/save/.
Initializing SDL (pure).
SDL driver used: x11
SDL initialized.
Initializing Screen.
Set the resolution to: 640x480x32
Initializing SDL audio subsystem.
SDL audio subsystem initialized.
Initializing MixSDL mixer.
MixSDL using driver 'SDL_audio'
Unable to open audio: a101, No available audio device
Sound driver initialization failed.
This may happen when a soundcard is not present or not available.
NOTICE: Try running UQM with '--sound=none' option


If I start up esd, it works again.

Pardon my ignorance on the subject of sound and Linux- it's just something I've never got around to understanding.

Thanks again!
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meep-eep
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Re: Linux sound driver/mixer?
« Reply #3 on: August 28, 2003, 08:21:22 pm »

It might be that the game hasn't got the permissions to access /dev/audio, /dev/dsp and/or /dev/mixer.
A suggestion if you don't want to use a sound daemon like esd or artsd:
make a group 'audio', 'chown :audio /dev/audio* /dev/dsp* /dev/mixer*', 'chmod 660 /dev/audio* /dev/dsp* /dev/mixer*', and put yourself in the 'audio' group.

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when the Creators return
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Re: Linux sound driver/mixer?
« Reply #4 on: August 28, 2003, 09:36:52 pm »

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chown :audio

...or as we prefer to invoke it on planet Earth:  "chgrp audio"  Tongue
« Last Edit: August 28, 2003, 09:37:15 pm by Nic. » Logged
TigTigger
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Re: Linux sound driver/mixer?
« Reply #5 on: August 29, 2003, 07:42:24 am »

Thanks, that was the problem.  uqm now runs without esd and with sound.

Except... I still have the sound lag!  I guess the problem isn't with esd after all.  Sad

Not sure where to go looking from here.  Like I said, I'm pretty sure the problem isn't with uqm, as some other apps do this too.

Here's the relevant (I think) loaded kernel modules:

es1371                 30824   0 (autoclean)
gameport                3364   0 (autoclean) [es1371]
ac97_codec             14568   0 (autoclean) [es1371]
soundcore               6404   4 (autoclean) [es1371]


And from dmesg:


es1371: found chip, vendor id 0x1274 device id 0x1371 revision 0x08
es1371: found es1371 rev 8 at io 0xe800 irq 3
es1371: features: joystick 0x0


(haven't been able to get my joystick to work either, but, one thing at a time...)

And:

uname -a
Linux argo 2.4.20-19.9 #1 Tue Jul 15 17:18:13 EDT 2003 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux


Any further guesses anyone might have would be really appreciated.  If none, any suggestions on where would be the best place to pursue this?
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meep-eep
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Re: Linux sound driver/mixer?
« Reply #6 on: August 29, 2003, 09:57:33 am »

Difficult to say.

I think it would be best to ask at some Linux specific place. Some comp.os.linux group (comp.os.linux.hardware maybe), or a Linux irc channel.
Or maybe someplace redhat specific.

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TigTigger
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Re: Linux sound driver/mixer?
« Reply #7 on: August 30, 2003, 11:01:18 am »

Well, I put a bug into Redhat's bugzilla quite some time ago, but it appears to have been bit-bucketed.

I'll try some newsgroups, and maybe try upgrading my kernel/modules.

Thanks everyone for their help.. if anyone comes across this and could suggest something, it would be great.
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