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Sound card recommendation for Linux box

jpangelo

jpangelo

Gawd
Joined
Sep 26, 2006
Messages
615
I need an audio card compatible with Linux (I'm using Mint). The only real requirement is an optical-out jack for an optical connection to my receiver, and I don't want to spend a lot (under $50). I don't game, just need sound for news, videos, etc.

Any help would be appreciated by this Linux n00b. :p
 
Sound support is pretty complete in current Linux kernels, especially if all you're after is digital output. Most recent motherboards have digital output of some kind as part of their onboard audio, though it may only be coax (orange RCA jack). Check this out first, and if not you can pretty much use any card that has the connections you need. Some suggestions:

USB - http://www.++++.com/products/?sku=51271
PCI - http://www.++++.com/products/?sku=23460

Dustin
 
Let me re-phrase. I have a computer. It does not have optical out on the motherboard. My current card, a ASUS Xonar DG, is not recognized. I need an opt-out solution.

I need a PCI-slot OPT-out sound card that works with Linux.
 
jpangelo said:
What does this mean? My install of Mint does not detect it; neither does ubuntu.
Spell it out for a n00b.
Click to expand...

There may be an unstable kernel package that uses 2.6.38+ which works with that card, but I'm not familiar with Mint in such a manner to know how the devs manage all that. Probably not your best option if you're new to linux though. I updated my prior post with a card that should work.
 
I bought the ASUS when I was still in Winders. I got sick of 7 about 2 weeks ago, and moved to Ubuntu. I've tried several diff kinds of Linux to detect my sound card but no luck. I'll buy the one you recommended and sell this one.

Other than this and the lack of Netflix support, I haven't come across any other incompatibilites. Sweet.




Thank you again Volkum!!
 
Your Xonar DG requires ALSA 1.0.24, which comes with Ubuntu 11.04. It will work out of the box and not require any commands :) Unfortunately it will not work in Ubuntu 10.10 or Linux Mint 9 (based on Ubuntu 10.10) without some of your much dreaded commands. Not very many commands mind you, 2 or 3 and you don't have to learn them, you'd just need to copy and paste them from a web browser into your terminal. I guarantee you've spent more time trying to find a compatible sound card than you would have spent upgrading the ALSA drivers on your current install to 1.0.24.

Dustin
 
*tentatively*

What commands? :p

Do you have time to explain them to the worlds biggest n00b?
 
I will have a bit more time to explain in full when I get home this evening, but heres the command line:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/unstable; sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade

this will add the third party repository for ALSA 1.0.24 for Maverick, then update your package list, then run an update to bring all your packages up to the latest known versions according to your package list (including ALSA).

Then reboot to make sure that new kernel modules are loaded. Good luck :)

Dustin
 
Just ran above procedure remotely on my Maverick (x86) box at home, everything seemed to go smoothly and my sound card initialized. Don't know if it's actually making sound since I'm not home but I'd say probably yes :) Didn't need ALSA 1.0.24 for my Inferno but figured I should at least test my method since I instructed it. For the record that is 3 commands strung together into 1, so let's average it out and say 2.

Dustin
 
dustNbone said:
Just ran above procedure remotely on my Maverick (x86) box at home, everything seemed to go smoothly and my sound card initialized. Don't know if it's actually making sound since I'm not home but I'd say probably yes :) Didn't need ALSA 1.0.24 for my Inferno but figured I should at least test my method since I instructed it. For the record that is 3 commands strung together into 1, so let's average it out and say 2.

Dustin
Click to expand...

Dustin it seems to be working- YOU ARE THE MAN!

{if you ever need anything AK-related, let me know :p)

It's packing and unpacking all kinds of things
 
but.... still no sound card. It doesn't detect it. I did what you said, but I don't know how to update the package list, and probably did that wrong.
 
Last edited:
jpangelo said:
but.... still no sound card. It doesn't detect it. I did what you said, but I don't know how to update the package list, and probably did that wrong.
Click to expand...

If you copied and pasted the following into a terminal:
Code: 
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/unstable; sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade
Then you didn't do anything wrong... The semicolons ";" separate the individual commands in a string of commands that you can execute one by one in the order you want it to. "sudo apt-get update" updates package list and "sudo apt-get upgrade" upgrades the packages.
 
Hmmm very strange that it wouldn't work, I read the changelog for ALSA 1.0.24 and support for the Xonar DG was specifically added this version. Did you check under System-> Preferences-> Sound and under Hardware make sure the correct output you want it set? You may also need to go in there to set the output to digital (optical). I'm not sure exactly how this is laid out in Mint, but i'm pretty sure the new ALSA is installed if you ran the command string I gave above. To confirm try running

aplay -l

from the terminal, this will give you a list of all installed audio devices, please copy/paste the output here and we can see whats going on.

Dustin
 
dustNbone said:
Hmmm very strange that it wouldn't work, I read the changelog for ALSA 1.0.24 and support for the Xonar DG was specifically added this version. Did you check under System-> Preferences-> Sound and under Hardware make sure the correct output you want it set? You may also need to go in there to set the output to digital (optical). I'm not sure exactly how this is laid out in Mint, but i'm pretty sure the new ALSA is installed if you ran the command string I gave above. To confirm try running

aplay -l

from the terminal, this will give you a list of all installed audio devices, please copy/paste the output here and we can see whats going on.

Dustin
Click to expand...

Yes, under Hardware, there was nothing listed- it was empty. I re-installed Ubuntu 64 bit earlier, version 10.04.

I'll do what you said next, now.
 
Alright, might not be exactly the same in Mint as Ubuntu, i've never used Mint. I also generally only use 32 bit distros unless I have a compelling reason to use 64 bit, just makes things simpler I find. Even if you have 4+GB of RAM, modern kernels support PAE allowing access to 8GB. Shouldn't really affect this situation with your sound card, but I cannot say for sure as I don't have a 64 bit Ubuntu box to test against. Did you run aplay -l to see if your audio device(s) were listed there? That will give you a more definitive answer as to whether the kernel module (driver) recognized it.

Dustin
 
Last edited:
dustNbone said:
Alright, might not be exactly the same in Mint as Ubuntu, i've never used Mint. I also generally only use 32 bit distros unless I have a compelling reason to use 64 bit, just makes things simpler I find. Even if you have 4+GB of RAM, modern kernels support PAE allowing access to 8GB. Shouldn't really affect this situation with your sound card, but I cannot say for sure as I don't have a 64 bit Ubuntu box to test against. Did you run aplay -l to see if your audio device(s) were listed there? That will give you a more definitive answer as to whether the kernel module (driver) recognized it.

Dustin
Click to expand...

Ok, I reinstalled Ubuntu 64 bit.10.04 . I ran the command as you typed it, via copy/paste. It updated a bunch of stuff, then I rebooted. It shows a dash next to the audio symbol. When I click on it, there is no hardware listed, under Sound Preferences, Hardware, Choose a Device to Configure, it is blank.

aplay command says no hardware found.
 
Last edited:
OK, I suspect that the backported ALSA version I got you to install may be having trouble with the 64 bit kernel. In the terminal type

dpkg -s alsa-base

This will tell you what version of ALSA is currently installed, it will say 1.0.23 if it's still running the version included with Maverick, 1.0.24+dfsg-0ubuntu1~10.10~ricotz1 if the upgrade was successful. Like I said before, I'm not sure about the 64 bit kernel support, it would depend on the third party that backported the newer version of ALSA. Also, have you had this card working before in another OS? It may just be faulty hardware and we're never going to make it work (it happens). You can check to see if the hardware is being seen by the PCI controller by running

lspci

in the terminal. This will list all visible PCI devices including stuff built in to the motherboard, a sound card would look something like:

01:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CMI8788 [Oxygen HD Audio]

at least this will verify that the physical hardware side of things are good.

Dustin
 
Source: alsa-driver
Version: 1.0.22.1+dfsg-0ubuntu3
Provides: alsa


The second part shows the sound card is there


01:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CMI8788 [Oxygen HD Audio]


if 64-bit is teh issue I can go back to 32 bit- I have no tie to 64 bit.

yes, card was new 1 week ago, it worked under Windows 7, and worked under Ubuntu 11.04 (but 1104 locks up on me)
 
I reinstalled Ubuntu 32 bit and tried the above, but I still get no hardware found.
 
ok something definetly went wrong with installing the new ALSA, the version number is reflecting this. With your fresh install, enter the commands seperately as follows:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/unstable

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

check the output after each one for error messages, and make sure that you read it carefully. You may be skipping past something important, because there's no way that these commands could be entered without errors and still have you running ALSA 1.0.22 it's simply not possible. You just need to step your way through and make sure it's all going as it should. Your hardware looks fine, your just missing a step somewhere.

Dustin
 
There should be no need to change kernels, that's a pretty drastic measure to get a noob to perform, and will often break other things (video drivers being the most common). ALSA 1.0.24 is the version included in 2.6.38 but it's not dependent on it. There are a few big changes in 2.6.38 and I'd be leary about just dropping it into a distro designed around older kernels.

Dustin
 
dustNbone said:
ok something definetly went wrong with installing the new ALSA, the version number is reflecting this. With your fresh install, enter the commands seperately as follows:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/unstable

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

check the output after each one for error messages, and make sure that you read it carefully. You may be skipping past something important, because there's no way that these commands could be entered without errors and still have you running ALSA 1.0.22 it's simply not possible. You just need to step your way through and make sure it's all going as it should. Your hardware looks fine, your just missing a step somewhere.

Dustin
Click to expand...

I did this line by line, in Ubuntu 32 bit, and at the end it said 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

No hardware detected.
 
Is there a sound card I can buy that I know will work? All I want is optical out. It's just not worth all this....just optical out, all I need
 
Theres plenty of cards that will work, the one you have is just very new and therefore needs newer software to operate it. Seriously any sound card that wasn't released in the last 6 months will probably work, but the DG is a brand new piece of hardware. You are missing something somewhere because I did exactly the same upgrade on exactly the same version of Ubuntu and I am now running ALSA 1.0.24 successfully. There is no reason it shouldn't do the same thing for you. You didn't say what the output from the first 2 commands was, it looks like the apt-add-repository command wasn't successful because there were no new packages to upgrade as there should be. This is Ubuntu 10.10 right?

Dustin
 
Can you name a card that you know works in a default install with opt-out? I want something I can plug in and boot up with zero bs. I sit here with PP ready, and I'm sick of doing without sound. The output on the mobo is RCA and it hums through my subs, thus the desire for optical connection. I do not care about features on the card, or Creative game stuff, just opt-out on aPCI-bus card.
 
I've installed the AuzenTech X-Studio on linux boxes before. About 40 dollars. Just find one that's available and cheap, like I said almost any sound card will do. Yours is the first in a very long time that I've run into that wasn't, and it actually IS supported on the newest Ubuntu. You're really very close to having this one working on your current setup, but you seem unwilling to go through the proper steps to finish it off. The method I gave works, if done correctly, every single time. It's not a guess, it's a procedure, and it will only work one way.

Dustin
 
dustNbone said:
I've installed the AuzenTech X-Studio on linux boxes before. About 40 dollars. Just find one that's available and cheap, like I said almost any sound card will do. Yours is the first in a very long time that I've run into that wasn't, and it actually IS supported on the newest Ubuntu. You're really very close to having this one working on your current setup, but you seem unwilling to go through the proper steps to finish it off. The method I gave works, if done correctly, every single time. It's not a guess, it's a procedure, and it will only work one way.

Dustin
Click to expand...



I did it your way, exactly, by copy/paste, and it didn't work. The 3 lines you gave me result in the same response, 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. I did this in Mint, I did it in U-64, and U-32, all with the same results today. This is on default installs on U-32, U-64, and Mint-64.
 
Hmmmm. The first command should respond something like this:

dustin@dustin-ubuntu:~$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/unstable
Executing: gpg --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring --secret-keyring /etc/apt/secring.gpg --trustdb-name /etc/apt/trustdb.gpg --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --primary-keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 38AE4F60E356CE050312FA1775CFD31C9E5DB0C8
gpg: requesting key 9E5DB0C8 from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: key 9E5DB0C8: "Launchpad PPA for Rico" not changed
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: unchanged: 1

The second one:

dustin@dustin-ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get update
Get:1 http://dl.google.com stable Release.gpg [197B]
Ign http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/ stable/main Translation-en
Ign http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/ stable/main Translation-en_US
Hit http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca maverick Release.gpg
Ign http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu/ maverick/main Translation-en
Ign http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu/ maverick/main Translation-en_US
Hit http://ppa.launchpad.net maverick/main Sources
Hit http://ppa.launchpad.net maverick/main i386 Packages
Fetched 2,005B in 1s (1,396B/s)
Reading package lists... Done

Then the third one (which was the one it looks like you actually ran and gave me results from):

sudo apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
dustin@dustin-ubuntu:~$

I really think the first part (the apt-add-repository ppa:ricotz/unstable one) didn't run. Thus, the repository wasn't added, and therefore update and upgrade had nothing to do. The first command is the critical one. You can even add the repository and do all the update and upgrade through synaptic package manager and avoid command line. System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. Then Settings -> Repositories -> Other Software -> Add. Next to APT Line enter ppa:ricotz/unstable and click Add Source. Back at main Synaptic screen click Reload and then Mark All Upgrades then Apply. Reboot. The GUI way is so much more work though.

Dustin
 
I ran all 3 lines. The first 2 made it spew all sorts of lines of code, and it was busy for a while. I listed what the 3rd command gave me as a result.
 
No, I re-installed U-64bit, version 11.04. I'm going to see if I can keep it from locking up, by using Ubuntu Classic without Unity.

Thanks again for all the help. and time, Dustin.
 
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