On Friday 04 January 2008 09:43:31 D.H.J. Takken wrote: > Hello, > > I'm considering to get myself an M-Audio Revolution 5.1 card. All I want it > to do is play high quality standard 44 KHz 16 bit music and AC3 streams > across two pairs of speakers (front and rear), using analog outputs and two > stereo amps. > > Reading the list archives, various forums and the ALSA changelogs, I am a > bit concerned that there might be some issues with surround playback on > this card. I tried to figure out if these issues are all resolved in recent > ALSA or not, but I can't be sure. My main sources of concern: > > * Possible issues with channels being mixed up > * Possible problems with buffering/sample rates/crackling sound > * It is not clear if the LFE channel can be mixed into the front channels > * The changelogs for the driver are rather short, lately. Either this means > there are few issues left (I do hope so!), of the driver lacks maintainers. > > So, if you own a Revolution 5.1, please reply and take my concerns away.. > :) > > Thanks a lot! > > Cheers, > > Dik Dik, I have a Revo 7.1 which uses the same driver. At least with current ALSA drivers the Revo 7.1 works nicely. The biggest issues I think are related to the names used for the controls not being very user meaningful. But once I got the drivers configured it has worked very well. The channels are where I expect them with both the analog and digital outputs. I have only had one issue related to sample rates and this was because the default driver settings locked the sample rate and samples at other rates did not play correctly. This is fixed by unlocking the sample rate. I have never gotten crackling sounds. The LFE channel should be mixed into the other channels if you select a 4 or two channel setup in alsamixer. But I am running a 5.1 setup so I can not confirm this. I have read that the headphone port on the Revo 5.1 does not work. But this may have been fixed (anyone know?). The Revo 7.1 uses that port for the other two speaker outputs. As far as I can tell this driver is fairly mature. From my reading there were some problems with the Revo drivers before version 1.0.14. I am currently using 1.0.15. One other "issue" with this series of cards is that the analog speaker outputs tend to thump when the computer is starting up and shutting down. This is well documented for Windows users and I can confirm that this happens with Linux as well. The digital (SPDIF) outputs, which I use, do not have this problem. SPDIF outputs work nicely once configured but only coax is supported by the hardware. Hal ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Alsa-user mailing list Alsa-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user
