Finally, A Creative X-Fi Driver Going Into ALSA

[rv65]

I believe Kernel v2.6.31 should have this driver built right in.

[faemir]

I believe Kernel v2.6.31 should have this driver built right in.

woo! It's about time :P

[harl]

At last I can swap out my audigy 2 with my nice new x-fi!

Don't worry, you didn't make me wait as long as Duke Nukem Forever or TF2 <3

Are there a great differnce between Audigy2 and X-fi under Linux ?

[deanjo]

Are there a great differnce between Audigy2 and X-fi under Linux ?

The audigy / 2 / live etc have alot more funttionality and features then the current x-fi drivers. The x-fi drivers are very basic at this point in time.

[chabo]

S/PDIF pass-through

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

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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 ?