Best Quality Audio in Linux

xd-0 · 2009-04-12 08:31:42

Tried going ossv4 some while ago, but found it to be more work than gain. mostly because I went and removed alsa completely from my system. This meant rebuilding lots of pkgs with makepkg to remove all alsa dependencies. Reading this thread, perhaps I will give it a go again, but how do you guys deal with alsa?

Fackamato · 2009-04-12 13:22:56

xd-0 wrote:

Tried going ossv4 some while ago, but found it to be more work than gain. mostly because I went and removed alsa completely from my system. This meant rebuilding lots of pkgs with makepkg to remove all alsa dependencies. Reading this thread, perhaps I will give it a go again, but how do you guys deal with alsa?

Just don't load the alsa modules, that's all?

No need to rebuild every package, this isn't gentoo...

xd-0 · 2009-04-12 13:52:49

If it where that easy
If you are'nt bothered with having alsa installed then that would be the way to go. But if you want to remove alsa then you have a dependency hell

R00KIE · 2009-04-12 14:31:22

Mostly I see dependencies just of alsa-lib and _most_ programs will work just fine with oss without the need to recompile. That I recall only a couple of things needed to be recompiled here. One of them was snack, the other was the -bad stuff of gstreamer but I still suspect it was just a version problem, not oss specific stuff.
Sadly linphone does not like oss at all and it seems there are a few more apps that will not use it too .... appart from that no problems whatsoever here.

Themaister · 2009-04-12 17:44:55

ALSA with hardware mixing is pretty awesome Very, very low CPU usage too. The problem with ALSA is dmix.

Odysseus · 2009-04-13 20:24:59

I tried ossv4. It works with my Intel HD audio laptop just fine, but there was some crackling so I switched back to alsa. Changing vmix quality made no discernable difference.

Looks promising and if it supported my usb audio interfaces I'd switch immediately.

Frots · 2009-04-13 21:05:29

This usually means you have to lower the volume of some channel

eDio · 2009-04-17 19:37:22

After installing OSS (maybe) i get messages while booting, as
FATAL Module snd_pcm not found
and so on.

Anybody knows, what causes this messages?

pauldonnelly · 2009-04-17 20:07:05

Frots wrote:

This usually means you have to lower the volume of some channel

Is there some secret hidden channel to lower? I tried OSS4 but had to set the volume stupidly low to avoid clipping.

uastasi · 2009-04-18 11:15:27

I have some problems with muting volume with Gnome 2.26.
When I press Fn+F10 a notification is showed

no channel is muted.
No problem instead when toggling volume-applet icon. :|

R00KIE · 2009-04-18 16:16:50

pauldonnelly wrote:

Frots wrote:
This usually means you have to lower the volume of some channel
Is there some secret hidden channel to lower? I tried OSS4 but had to set the volume stupidly low to avoid clipping.

There should be a pcm channel (global) you can lower besides the per app volume and the global vmix volume.

methuselah · 2009-05-02 23:28:52

I'm definitely liking oss4's sound better..... but I have a question about this message I get in my dmesg when I boot:

oss_hdaudio: Unknown HDA codec 0x14f15051
oss_hdaudio: Unknown HDA codec 0x14f15051

Last edited by methuselah (2009-05-02 23:30:20)

brisbin33 · 2009-05-02 23:30:56

methuselah wrote:

I'm definitely liking oss4's sound better..... but I have a question about this message I get in my dmesg when I boot:
oss_hdaudio: Unknown HDA codec 0x14f15051
oss_hdaudio: Unknown HDA codec 0x14f15051

i get that too, everything seems to be working though.

nfm · 2009-05-03 03:46:52

And how ossv4 produces higher quality sound than alsa? It's up to your soundcard's DAC and OP-AMPs when driver is programmed correctly. Alsa, ossv4, or driver under Windows XP work for me equally well, I'm using Auzen X-Fi Prelude with 2x OPA637 OP-AMPs and few PWM filtering Rubycon BlackGate NX capacitors.

Fackamato · 2009-05-03 12:07:26

nfm wrote:

And how ossv4 produces higher quality sound than alsa? It's up to your soundcard's DAC and OP-AMPs when driver is programmed correctly. Alsa, ossv4, or driver under Windows XP work for me equally well, I'm using Auzen X-Fi Prelude with 2x OPA637 OP-AMPs and few PWM filtering Rubycon BlackGate NX capacitors.

dmix.

R00KIE · 2009-05-03 14:21:26

nfm wrote:

And how ossv4 produces higher quality sound than alsa? It's up to your soundcard's DAC and OP-AMPs when driver is programmed correctly. Alsa, ossv4, or driver under Windows XP work for me equally well, I'm using Auzen X-Fi Prelude with 2x OPA637 OP-AMPs and few PWM filtering Rubycon BlackGate NX capacitors.

What you don't focus enough is "when driver is programmed correctly". I and many other people can tell the difference, I could even show you the crappy quality of recording I get from mic with alsa vs the as good as it can be quality with oss.

(spelling edit)
Don't put the blame of the quality problem just on the components used because that's just not it.

@methuselah
Thats just because oss doesn't know the name of the codec in your hardware (Ex.: ALC660, not sound controller):
I believe that if oss knew that then it would present ossxmix with more informative/detailed controls name, but everything will still work, don't worry.

Last edited by R00KIE (2009-05-03 14:22:17)

methuselah · 2009-05-05 03:02:07

R00KIE wrote:

nfm wrote:
And how ossv4 produces higher quality sound than alsa? It's up to your soundcard's DAC and OP-AMPs when driver is programmed correctly. Alsa, ossv4, or driver under Windows XP work for me equally well, I'm using Auzen X-Fi Prelude with 2x OPA637 OP-AMPs and few PWM filtering Rubycon BlackGate NX capacitors.
What you don't focus enough is "when driver is programmed correctly". I and many other people can tell the difference, I could even show you the crappy quality of recording I get from mic with alsa vs the as good as it can be quality with oss.
(spelling edit)
Don't put the blame of the quality problem just on the components used because that's just not it.
@methuselah
Thats just because oss doesn't know the name of the codec in your hardware (Ex.: ALC660, not sound controller):
I believe that if oss knew that then it would present ossxmix with more informative/detailed controls name, but everything will still work, don't worry.

Thank you brisbin33 and ROOKIE.

Oss4 has definitely been much better sound than alsa..... it got even better when I discovered that I had to change my gstreamer-properties to "oss4sink". Now it sounds incredible.

Last edited by methuselah (2009-08-23 22:11:47)

sand_man · 2009-05-05 04:08:50

On a side note; is oss4 still under development?

*edit
never mind, I answered my own question

Last edited by sand_man (2009-05-05 04:11:33)

sand_man · 2009-05-05 04:30:13

methuselah wrote:

I'm definitely liking oss4's sound better..... but I have a question about this message I get in my dmesg when I boot:
oss_hdaudio: Unknown HDA codec 0x14f15051
oss_hdaudio: Unknown HDA codec 0x14f15051

I also just thought I would point this out, http://mercurial.opensound.com/?rev/bcb395446145

kalpik · 2009-05-05 18:16:28

I installed OSS.. Its AWESOME! But my gnome-volume-control doesnt work anymore.. It says "No volume control GStreamer plugins and/or devices found."

Any ideas?

uastasi · 2009-05-05 18:30:29

kalpik wrote:

I installed OSS.. Its AWESOME! But my gnome-volume-control doesnt work anymore.. It says "No volume control GStreamer plugins and/or devices found."
Any ideas?

Seems strange, since It works for me. What if you run gstreamer-properties?

kalpik · 2009-05-05 18:32:43

Yeah.. i figured it out.. gstreamer-bad-plugins was not installed.. Works now Sorry for the trouble!

uastasi · 2009-05-05 18:52:35

kalpik wrote:

Yeah.. i figured it out.. gstreamer-bad-plugins was not installed.. Works now Sorry for the trouble!

Have you encountered this problem too??

kalpik · 2009-05-06 01:33:45

No.. I dont have that problem. Do one thing, right click the volume icon in the tray, and select Preferences. Then make sure vmix0-outvol is selected as the device to control.

Echo · 2009-05-06 02:32:19

Bit perfect sound via a soundcard capable of bit perfect output, such as a M-Audio Audiophile 2496 or other card & let the recevier or dac do the work.

Arch Linux

#26 2009-04-12 08:31:42

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#27 2009-04-12 13:22:56

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#28 2009-04-12 13:52:49

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#29 2009-04-12 14:31:22

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#30 2009-04-12 17:44:55

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#31 2009-04-13 20:24:59

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#32 2009-04-13 21:05:29

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#33 2009-04-17 19:37:22

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#34 2009-04-17 20:07:05

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#35 2009-04-18 11:15:27

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#36 2009-04-18 16:16:50

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#37 2009-05-02 23:28:52

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#38 2009-05-02 23:30:56

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#39 2009-05-03 03:46:52

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#40 2009-05-03 12:07:26

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#41 2009-05-03 14:21:26

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#42 2009-05-05 03:02:07

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#43 2009-05-05 04:08:50

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#44 2009-05-05 04:30:13

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#45 2009-05-05 18:16:28

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#46 2009-05-05 18:30:29

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#47 2009-05-05 18:32:43

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#48 2009-05-05 18:52:35

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#49 2009-05-06 01:33:45

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

#50 2009-05-06 02:32:19

Re: Best Quality Audio in Linux

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