Arch Linux

FaktoPhy

Member

Registered: 2007-09-20

Posts: 1

no hardwaremixing with Intel-HDA 82801H (ICH8 Family) - ALC888 ?

Hallo Archlinux community!

I have the following trouble with my soundchip.
Intel-HDA 82801H (ICH8 Family)
The normal soundoutput (music,movie-sound, etc) works. But when i use games that depend on sdl / openal, the sound crackles (Nexuiz) or most of the time don't even work at all (Neverwinter Nights, Warzone2100).
Some of these programs say that the audio device is busy; and the output supports it:

aplay -l

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC883 Analog [ALC883 Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

But there are two points that disturb me. First, that I can't find any information on the web if the explicit version of my soundchip supports hardwaremixing or not (maybe I only search at the wrong places with the wrong keywords ). And second, the codec alsa choosed doesn't seem to be the correct one.

head -n5 /proc/asound/card0/codec#0

Codec: Realtek ALC888
Address: 0
Vendor Id: 0x10ec0888
Subsystem Id: 0x10250121
Revision Id: 0x100101

I have the latest version of Archlinux and it runs on an Acer Aspire 5920G.
Some output that might be useful:
lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Contoller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600M GT (rev a1)
06:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN Network Connection (rev 61)
08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
0a:09.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
0a:09.1 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
0a:09.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 12)
0a:09.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
0a:09.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)

And btw I don't run any sounddaemons (arts,esd) I'm aware of.

If certain other informations about the System is required I'd like to provide it.
Thank you for time. Any help and small hint is appreciated.

Greets FaktoPhy

PS.: As you may notice english isn't my native tounge. If some passages are incomprehensible, please tell me.

erm67

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2007-08-01

Posts: 123

Re: no hardwaremixing with Intel-HDA 82801H (ICH8 Family) - ALC888 ?

Try other drivers to see which is best.
From http://icculus.org/lgfaq/:

Q: How can I specify what driver (oss...alsa) to use with these SDL games?
A: export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=dsp, other relevant options are:
    *                 alsa
    *                 artsc (Analog Realtime Synthesizer)
    *                 disk (goes to sdlaudio.raw in cwd)
    *                 dma (OSS /dev/dsp dma)
    *                 esd (Enlightenment Sound Daemon)
    *                 nas (Network Audio System)
Q: How can I tell OpenAL based games what driver (oss...alsa) to use?
A: Replace driver with one of the below options echo "(define devices '(driver))" > ~/.openalrc

    *             native (OSS)
    *             sdl (Simple DirectMedia Layer backend, see above Q/A)
    *             arts (arts backend)
    *             esd (ESounD backend)
    *             alsa (ALSA)
    *             waveout (Output a wav file)
    *             null (no sound)

kagerato

Member

Registered: 2007-09-10

Posts: 45

Website

Re: no hardwaremixing with Intel-HDA 82801H (ICH8 Family) - ALC888 ?

# cat /proc/asound/pcm

The output should list one or more devices, one per line.  Each relevant device should have "playback" with a number next to it.  That number is the total supported streams at any given time.  Sound cards with hardware mixing might say "playback 32", for instance.

Most motherboard-integrated sound chips have no hardware mixing.  When that is the case, you must do software mixing.  Look for HOWTOs on ALSA and dmix.  For an SDL application, you'll need to make sure the sound output is actually ALSA.

Links:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/All … nd_at_once
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_ALSA_sound_mixer_aka_dmix
http://wiki.flightgear.org/flightgear_w … FlightGear