[mythtv-users] which sound card to get?

[Jesse Guardiani]

Kevin Kuphal wrote:
> Raphael Pooser wrote:
>   
>> Good to hear that this one works.  If retrying my old Live Value with 
>> higher PCI latency doesn't do the trick, I'll grab one of these.  That's 
>> still going to be cheaper than getting an old refurbished audigy.  Do 
>> you guys use this one with ALSA, or do you use this with the default in 
>> mythtv which is /dev/dsp?  (I don't believe that /dev/dsp points to 
>> ALSA:default; I think it is actually OSS emulation if you're using ALSA 
>> - not sure).  Thanks for the suggestions.
>>   
>>     
> I use it with ALSA on Fedora Core.  It's recognized by the OS, all I had 
> to do was go into alsamixer, enable the SPDIF port, and that's it.  I 
> don't have a .asoundrc file or anything.  My Myth devices is ALSA:spdif 
> or ALSA:default (can't remember which).
>   

I use it with both OSS and ALSA. I use the long complex .asoundrc from here:
   http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Configuring_Digital_Sound

The only issue I have is that playing  DVDs burned from MythBurn with 
AC3 transcode turned on
require turning off xine's passthrough. My external hardware decoder 
(Logitech Z-5500) can't read
the raw audio generated by my old PVR 350 recordings transcoded to AC3. 
Not sure why.

So, in order to get the best of both worlds (passthrough for DTS/Dolby 
Digital with professional DVDs,
but still play my old MythBurn DVDs) I rigged a button on my remote to 
swap xine config files
between passthrough and default via irexec. It's a bit kludgy, but it 
works. If xine fails to load the DVD,
just press the button and try again. It's not very wife/family friendly 
though. :(

All my other stuff works fine with optical out. I just have to make sure 
I choose 48000 as the audio
bitrate. Programs I use on a regular basis that work fine:

zsnes, snes9x, xmame, mythfrontend, mupen64_nogui, pcsx, epsxe, k3b

-- 
Jesse Guardiani
Programmer/Sys Admin
jesse at wingnet.net