[mythtv-users] Soundcard recommendation please

Thomas Börkel thomas at boerkel.de
Sun Jan 28 09:24:08 UTC 2007


HI!

My Soundblaster 5.1 is about to die, I think. Sometimes it gets suddenly 
pretty silent and noisy. I have to turn off/on the frontend to fix this 
(reboot is not enough).

So, I am looking for a new soundcard, probably from Creative. Problem 
ist, the ALSA soundcard compatibility web page is always outdated.

What I want is:
- analog out (of course)
- digital (koax=no optical, spdif) out
- digital out should work with AC3 2.0/MP2 and AC3 5.1
- compatible with FC5, kernel 2.6.18
- <$100

My current soundcard works very well with MythTV's AC3 passthrough 
option. I normally (AC3 2.0 sound or MP2/3) use analog out for TV 
(watching recordings) and digital out for amplifier (MythMusic). When 
there is a recording with 5.1, I just enable AC3 passthrough in MythTV 
settings and the amplifier switches to Dolby Digital. I have set 
ALSA:default as primary device and ALSA:spdif as AC3 passthrough device 
and I do not need a special .asoundrc or modifying the ALSA settings all 
the time. So, everything works perfectly regarding configuration/usability.

If you're still reading ;-), the new soundcard should work equally good 
as described in the previous paragraph.

Thanks for input!

Thomas



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list