The general rule of thumb seems to be "buy a SoundBlaster Live/Audigy" and your life with Linux sound will be easy. I have an old SoundBlaster Live 5.1 and it works great under every distro I've used.
Yes that is the safe side to go if buy blindly, but I think most cards have the capibilities but the drivers don't support them, or in the case of windows drivers they have software mixing inside(?). My nforce2 onboard sound is working really well right now, I think arch made it that much easier to install also.
]]>Sound Blaster PCI 512
Sound Blaster Live
Sound Blaster Live Platinum
Sound Blaster Live Value
Sound Blaster Live 5.1
Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum
Sound Blaster Audigy Digital Entertainment
Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer
Sound Blaster Audigy ES
Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro
Sound Blaster Audigy4 Pro
Sound Blaster Audigy2 NX
Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Value
A-trend 3DS724A
ALi Generic device M1535, M1535D, M1535+, M1535D+
AMD Generic device InterWave
AudioScience ASI6012, ASI6044, ASI6122, ASI6114, ASI6118, ASI6244, ASI6416, ASI5041, ASI5042, ASI5044, ASI5111, ASI4346, ASI8702, ASI8703, ASI8705, ASI8712, ASI8713, ASI4215, ASI4342, ASI4344
Aureal AU8810, AU8820, AU8830
AzTech System Ltd. PCI 64-Q3D, PCI 288-Q3DII, PCI 338-A3D
Echo Digital Audio Corporation Mia, Mia-midi, Indigo, Indigo DJ
Guillemot MaxiSound Fortissimo
HIS 4DWave PCI
Jaton Sonicwave 4D
Labway - all except: Xwave 4000, Xwave G7X, Xwave 7100
NEC PK-UG-X013
Trident 4D-Wave DX & NX
*Nvidia nForce (with nvidia's drivers only)
how do you tell if the card itself supports hardware mixing?
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mattux
]]>I have an aopen aw850 for example, does that support it?
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