Re: Linux, Auditory Icons, es1370 sound card

[Kerry Hoath <kerry@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am replying to your message that speaks about es1370 not beeing to play
U-law (.au) data.
You are correct in assuming that the stock kernel 2.2.x sound drivers can not
play .au files to /dev/audio in native mode. The ES1370 and ES1371 have no
hardware support for mu-law or A-law data types.
Your solution to use sox to convert the files to raw 8-bit or 16-bit is one of
the possible solutions.
The other solution is to run the ALSA (Advanced Linux sound Artichecture)
drivers, http://www.alsa-project.org which do the conversion from Mu-law
on /dev/audio to 16-bit signed 16-bit data which the card will play.
This solution has the advantage that programs like speak-freely will continue
to run, since that particular application expects a working Sun-like
/dev/audio interface at 8000 samples per second Mu-Law.

Rpms and source rpm buildable versions of the ALSA drivers are available
for Redhat, and .tar.gz and .debs are available for others.
The ALSA drivers also have the advantage under kernels 2.0.xx of providing
a full duplex option for the WSS, SB16 and better and they run the PCI cards
under 2.0.xx kernels. They also support some of the OPL#-sa cards,
the Crystal sound cs423X codecs, the ESS1868 and 1869 cards, and the
ESS1938 (ess Solo-1) PCI cards.

This is not an exhaustive list of features for ALSA, I am only sumarizing the
commonest cards that people might have that this driver supports under 2.0.xx
that the Oss/Free drivers don't support at this time. Comercial Opensound drivers
are of course more full featured, but ALSA is free.

Regards, Kerry.

-- 
--
Kerry Hoath: kerry@xxxxxxxxxxx
kerry@xxxxxxxxxxx or khoath@xxxxxxxxxxx
ICQ UIN: 8226547

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