Recommended Sound Card? (Linux)

[CSniper]

Hello
I have been experiencing problems with sound (delayed by about half a second) on a few games over 3 distros. This means that my sound card is likely to be at fault. I want to buy a new one.

What sound cards are you people using that work fine with games on Linux? What exactly is it that is killing the response time?

I currently have a Soundblaster Audigy LS.

[Workaphobia]

It's possible that alsa or hardware acceleration is misconfigured. I know that bzflag in particular will get very laggy, even in the menu, without acceleration. Also, I had delay problems when I tried combining sample rate conversion, stereo spreading across six channels, and dmix.

I'm not sure how much of that is particular to bzflag.

[esteel]

Can you take a look at this post: http://www.forums.alientrap.local/viewtopi ... =1851#1851

Also a few posts further down you'll find other things that often help: http://www.forums.alientrap.local/viewtopi ... =2294#2294
But i suppose with your problem its more the first thing to try.

[CSniper]

I don't understand what the first one means, It is not possible to create a file with a "/" in it's name?

-sndstereo is the switch that I have to use to get any sound at all, and it seems fine apart from the irritating delay. -sndspeed 4800 makes the sound stutter horribly.

It's a shame, because I really love this game. The delay puts me off, I rely on sound a lot.

[KadaverJack]

I don't understand what the first one means, It is not possible to create a file with a "/" in it's name?

No, of course it is not possible to create files with '/' in their name, because '/' is the directory seperator on linux/unix systems. '~' is replaced with the path to your home directory by the linux shell, so '~/.asoundrc' actually means: create a file called '.asoundrc' in your home directory.

And i agree with esteel: the problem is most certainly not your soundcard. Soundblaster cards should be well supported by linux, it's more likely a software/driver problem.

[esteel]

Yeah you really should try it with this file

[CSniper]

I don't understand what the first one means, It is not possible to create a file with a "/" in it's name?

No, of course it is not possible to create files with '/' in their name, because '/' is the directory seperator on linux/unix systems. '~' is replaced with the path to your home directory by the linux shell, so '~/.asoundrc' actually means: create a file called '.asoundrc' in your home directory.

And i agree with esteel: the problem is most certainly not your soundcard. Soundblaster cards should be well supported by linux, it's more likely a software/driver problem.

Sorry, I'm new to Linux.
Create a file named ".asoundrc" in my home directory, with the contents you specified. It doesn't seem to make a difference, other than making my sound card no longer show in the "Device" section of the sound settings for the OS.
I am using Ubuntu, by the way, not Fedora.

I can't get into my ALSA config, or find anything relating to sound hardware. I am asking about this on the Ubuntu forums.

[esteel]

Hmm strange. Any chance you have two soundcards? Onboard and a card maybe? Someone else had the same problems..

An other idea might be to try this:
http://www.forums.alientrap.local/viewtopi ... =2518#2518

[CSniper]

I have onboard sound, but it should be disabled in the BIOS.

EDIT typing one of the "export SDL_AUDIO=oss" or dma commands means that I get no sound at all in the game. I have to type "export SDL_AUDIO=alsa" to get anything out of it.

I am still having problems getting into the alsa configuration. "alsaconf" doesn't work - command not found.

[KadaverJack]

I am still having problems getting into the alsa configuration. "alsaconf" doesn't work - command not found.

On debian "alsaconf" is in the package "alsa-utils" (i guess it's the same name on ubuntu).
Make sure you have that package installed and run alsaconf as root.

But i don't think that will solve your problem... To my knowlegde the problem is caused by the alsa plugin "dmix", alsaconf will only set up your hardware afaik, which obviously is already working.
That .asoundrc i posted should disable dmix (at least that is working here (on debian) and at my universities workstations (fedora)). I don't know why it doesn't work for you (perhaps your onboard soundcard is still detected even though it's disabled) so the only advice i can give you is to read up on .asoundrc and multiple soundcards here: http://alsa.opensrc.org/ or ask in some alsa/ubuntu forums.