Hey, I'm a new user to Linux, so be nice!

I'm using Gentoo, I compiled my kernel with internel support for ALSA sound for my AC'97 sound card. Works fine for most native-ALSA applications. I also built in OSS sound emulation for ALSA.

I presume Nexuiz uses OSS, well..
The audio is HORRIBLE.. I figure this is a side effect of emulating it with ALSA.

Is there anyway to increase the sound performance or whatnot?

Using cheap soundcards the first thing to try would be to add:

-sndspeed 48000
and/or
-sndstereo

to the command when starting the game. Cheap sndcards dont support 44100 kHz sound natively, and this will foce the game to mix sounds at 48kHz, and/or downmix to stereo

Please try this and see if it helps.

I get crap sound with the same sound card. The sound parameters don't help much. IIRC it was something about Nexuiz being made for newer sound cards.

which nexuiz do you run ? OSS em works for me - soundblaster 24 tho ...

nexuiz-linux-686-dedicated*
nexuiz-linux-686-sdl*
nexuiz-linux-x86_64-dedicated*
nexuiz-linux-x86_64-sdl*
nexuiz-linux.sh*
nexuiz-sdl.exe*
nexuiz.exe*

running the sdl version sorted the horrid sound for me. im running Archlinux.

relevant daemons & modules from rc.conf :

MODULES=( <snip> .. snd-ca0106 snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-seq-oss)
DAEMONS=( <snip> .. alsa)

hope theres something u can pick out of this might help

kern

Introvert wrote:I presume Nexuiz uses OSS, well..

How did you install Nexuiz? Did you download the zip file or did you use the ebuild?
The sdl binary from the zip uses whatever sound API sdl chooses (see here how to change that), the ebuild might also compile the glx binary but that one uses alsa by default (unless it's told to use oss when compiling).

The parameters tChr posted usually fix the sound problem (the problem is: AC97 soundcards can only 48kHz sampling rates, everything else has to be resampled in software, but if the engine tries to detect which sampling rates are supported, they always list 44.1kHz as supported).
If they don't fix your problem, try the ebuild and test both binaries...