Finally, A Creative X-Fi Driver Going Into ALSA

[nbdwt73]

I tried that one and the others in dev. I found this one (http://www.moobash.com/cont/alsa-dri...napshot.tar.gz) that works...

[chabo]

By unstable you mean http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kern...a/alsa-driver/ ?

[nbdwt73]

I should report that I now have been running an X-Fi XtremeGamer connected to a 7.1 processor via optical out on the card for 3 days straight with no failures. I am using a driver from unstable (not the released driver posted on the ALSA site). Analog sound is also very good.

The spdif failures I reported earlier seem to have been corrected. The only complaint that I do have is alsamixer not behaving exactly right but that is OK - xine, mplayer controls work fine.

[chabo]

I've tried AC3/DTS pass-through and after while AV receiver lost signal. I've also tried it on Windows 7, there is everything OK so no hardware problem. Normal PCM stereo digital-out works properly.

[mad_max0204]

Any information on X-fi cards that come on motherboards (like on my Asus Maximus II GENE) ?? Are they gonna work with these new alsa drivers ?

[unix_epoch]

Thanks, your post saved me hours of search. I am seeing the exact same behavior on my emu10k1 (tried every ALSA version from .17 to .20).

Next step: ALSA bug tracker & mailing list.

I'm glad I could be of help. I've dealt with the ALSA mailing lists before when I was developing an ALSA driver, but I haven't found the time to report my emu10k1 issues.

[BlackStar]

I have similar problems with my emu10k1 (SB Live 5.1), though not to the same extent. I built my HTPC in 2003 then didn't keep up to date with new versions of Linux for two years. When I updated again, SPDIF output would frequently break after switching between AC3/DTS and PCM (where break means either output silence or garbage/non-audio data that blew out one of my speakers). It's no solution, but I wrote a script that goes through a ritual of toggling a bunch of low-level SPDIF settings using amixer, and that usually fixes the problem. That said, I suggest reporting any issues you find to the alsa-devel mailing list, which is unfortunately a lot more work than just responding to a Phoronix post, particularly because mailing lists are less tolerant of people repeating information and not searching the archives.

Thanks, your post saved me hours of search. I am seeing the exact same behavior on my emu10k1 (tried every ALSA version from .17 to .20).

Next step: ALSA bug tracker & mailing list.

[unix_epoch]

SPDIF is supported however there have been reported problems with performance. I have it working on a Debian machine with 1.0.21 ALSA. Whenever playing a video using spdif for 5.1, if the state of the player is changed (fast forward, chapter change, etc.) spdif fails. The only solution is to either reboot or reload the driver into the kernal (modprobe -r snd-ctxfi; modprobe snd-ctxfi).

Same thing happens on a Ubuntu build. Analog sound is unaffected.

I have similar problems with my emu10k1 (SB Live 5.1), though not to the same extent. I built my HTPC in 2003 then didn't keep up to date with new versions of Linux for two years. When I updated again, SPDIF output would frequently break after switching between AC3/DTS and PCM (where break means either output silence or garbage/non-audio data that blew out one of my speakers). It's no solution, but I wrote a script that goes through a ritual of toggling a bunch of low-level SPDIF settings using amixer, and that usually fixes the problem. That said, I suggest reporting any issues you find to the alsa-devel mailing list, which is unfortunately a lot more work than just responding to a Phoronix post, particularly because mailing lists are less tolerant of people repeating information and not searching the archives.

[nbdwt73]

SPDIF is supported however there have been reported problems with performance. I have it working on a Debian machine with 1.0.21 ALSA. Whenever playing a video using spdif for 5.1, if the state of the player is changed (fast forward, chapter change, etc.) spdif fails. The only solution is to either reboot or reload the driver into the kernal (modprobe -r snd-ctxfi; modprobe snd-ctxfi).

Same thing happens on a Ubuntu build. Analog sound is unaffected.

[chabo]

S/PDIF pass-through

Is S/PDIF pass-through supported in this driver?