linux-sound.html

Linus guide, Linus guide, Linus guide,

copy the kernel to the appropriate place, which is
<TT>/boot/vmlinuz</TT> if you're using Red Hat. Do this by typing in
<B><TT>cp arch/i386/boot/zImage /boot/vmlinuz</TT></B>, assuming
you're using Red Hat of course. (The kernel is /vmlinuz on
Slackware. I don't know about other distributions.) If you use LILO to
get into Linux, type <B><TT>lilo</TT></B>. If you use LOADLIN (loading
DOS/Win95 first and then using it to boot a copy of your kernel), you
need to copy the kernel (arch/i386/boot/zImage) to your DOS
partition. Again, there's more information on this available <A
HREF="linux-kernel.html">right here</A>.</P>

<A NAME="diditwork"></A>
<H3><A NAME="11">Did it Work?</A></H3>

<P>Now, whatever you do to reload Linux totally, do it. In my case I
would reboot. When your system spits out all its boot messages, here's
what it should say about the soundcard:</P>

<PRE>
Sound initialization started
&lt;Sound Blaster 16 (4.13)&gt; at 0x220 irq 5 dma 1,7
&lt;Sound Blaster 16&gt; at 0x330 irq 5 dma 0
&lt;Yamaha OPL3 FM&gt; at 0x388
Sound initialization complete
</PRE>

<P>Of course, it will look different if you have a different type of
card.  As long as you hear a little pop from the speakers or
something, that means it was configured correctly.</P>

<A NAME="pnp"></A>
<H4><A NAME="12">PnP Cards and the Problems Associated with Them</A></H4>

<P>My soundcard is PnP and it cost me a lot of frustration and
experimentation. That's what you have to frequently do when using
Linux.  But on to the information you actually care about: how to fix
it if it goes wrong for you.</P>

<P>If you think you followed the instructions on this page but get
something similar to the following error message when you boot up,
then it could be due to the PnP configuration. Here it is:</P>

<PRE>
Sound initialization started
Sound initialization complete
</PRE>

<P>Along with error messages like that, you won't hear a pop made by
the speakers, either. You probably configured everything right (you
know, the IRQ, DMA, and I/O base address stuff), but the card is PnP
and Linux doesn't like that (well, the stable kernel anyway). That's
why you should set up your machine for PnP in the BIOS, if you
can. Another method is with the isapnptools utility, which I haven't
figured out yet.  Information on it is available at <A
HREF="http://www.roestock.demon.co.uk/isapnptools"
TARGET="_top">http://www.roestock.demon.co.uk/isapnptools</A>.</P>

<P>Basically all that I had to do in the BIOS to get the soundcard to
work was to change a setting in the PnP configuration. I have an Award
BIOS, and the option was &quot;PnP OS Installed&quot; and the answer
was &quot;Yes&quot;. All I had to do was change it to
&quot;No&quot;. The reason this worked, I'm guessing, is that the BIOS
set up the PnP devices for me because it was told that there was no
PnP-aware operating system installed. Before, it was on
&quot;Yes&quot; so it just left the configuration of all the PnP
devices (the soundcard included) up to Windows 95.</P>

<P>The above method should suit most people just fine. However, I also
have an Ethernet card, and when I change those options in the BIOS, my
Ethernet card (a jumperless one) refuses to communicate with the rest
of the network. So, I have to load Windows 95 first, exit to DOS, and
then boot Linux using LOADLIN and my kernel. The command line for
Loadlin is <B>loadlin kernel_file</B>. Make sure that the kernel file
you're using is one with support for sound. The kernel file I'm
referring to is the actual kernel, which goes by the name of
<B>vmlinuz</B> somewhere on your Linux filesystem (/boot/vmlinuz or
/vmlinuz).</P>

<P>I leave the &quot;PnP OS Installed&quot; option to &quot;Yes&quot;
when I want to boot into Windows 95 and then use Loadlin to load
Linux. Windows sets up the soundcard and gets it working, and the
Ethernet card works too. I exit from Windows by going to Start ->
Shutdown and then choosing the option of &quot;Restart in MS-DOS
mode&quot;, which is just quitting Windows and going to DOS.</P>

<P>If I make the &quot;PnP OS Installed&quot; option to &quot;No&quot;
and then try the Windows -> Linux loading method, my soundcard will
still work, but my jumperless Ethernet card will not. So, I leave that
option to &quot;Yes&quot; in the BIOS.</P>

<A NAME="players"></A>
<H3><A NAME="13">Sound Playing Programs</A></H3>

<P>Most of the major Linux distributions (Red Hat, Slackware, Debian,
and Caldera) come with utilities to play sound. I don't know about the
less well-known distributions, but they probably include them
also.</P>

<P>For <TT>.au</TT> formats, you don't even need to have a program
installed for playing sound. All you have to have is the <B>cat</B>
program and sound properly configured. At the prompt, you can type in
<B><TT>cat soundfile.au &gt; /dev/audio</TT></B>. That should work for
.au formats only.</P>

<A NAME="midi"></A>
<H4><A NAME="14">MIDI</A></H4>

<P>Personally, I use the program <B><TT>playmidi</TT></B>, which was
already pre-installed on my Red Hat machine. If you didn't install
that package for Red Hat, it's <B><TT>playmidi-*.rpm</TT></B> from
your local Red Hat mirror or your Red Hat CD-ROM. I'm using a wildcard
because I'm too lazy to find out what the current version is... plus,
I won't have to update this document if a new version of playmidi
comes out. :-)</P>

<P>Playmidi is also available from SunSITE. As I'm writing this, it's
available from <A
HREF="http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/"
TARGET="_top">sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/</A>.  The
basic syntax is <B><TT>playmidi filename.mid</TT></B>.</P>

<A NAME="mp3"></A>
<H4><A NAME="15">MP3</A></H4>

<P>There are several good MP3 players that I'm aware of now. The ones
that I use often are <A HREF="http://www.xmms.org/">XMMS</A> (formerly
X11AMP) and <A
HREF="http://www-ti.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/~hippm/mpg123.html">mpg123</A>.
There's also <A
HREF="http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/5235/">GQMpeg</A>,
which is a front-end to <B>mpg123</B>.</P>

<P>XMMS looks very similar to Winamp. You can even use Winamp skins
for it. It supports playlists as well. As usual though, watch out for
high system load that will cause your MP3 playing to skip.</P>

<A NAME="realaudio"></A>
<H4><A NAME="16">RealAudio</A></H4>

<P>You can download RealPlayer from <A
HREF="http://www.real.com/">RealNetworks</A>. You can configure
Netscape to use that as a plugin. The README included in the Linux
version might have information on how to do that. If not, <A
HREF="mailto:[e-mail]">let me know</A> that it
doesn't.</P>

<A NAME="wav"></A>
<H4><A NAME="17">WAV</A></H4>

<P><A HREF="mailto:[e-mail]">Paul Winkle</A> let me know
about the <B>play</B> command. I checked, and it came with my Red Hat
5.1 distribution. It uses <B>sox</B>, which can also convert between
audio formats and even do basic effects.</P>

<A NAME="comments"></A>
<H3><A NAME="18">Comments</A></H3>

<P><A HREF="mailto:[e-mail]">Dave Click</A> wrote in to
say that OPL3 is his soundcard... that kinda makes sense to me now, so
if you've got the soundcard that he does, then you probably want to
enable support for that also. Anyway, here's his message.</P>

<PRE>
Just like to say I really like your page... i'm just getting started with
linux and this is helping me out a lot. I have something to add,
surprisingly... in section #9 - setting up sound, you mention:

Generic OPL2/OPL3 FM synthesizer support

OPL3 is my sound card - it's a Yamaha, and in Win95 that's my setting for
how it plays Midi.

I don't know if that helps... i don't know what opl stands for or
anything...
</PRE>

<P><A HREF="mailto:[e-mail]">Sybren Stuvel</A> wrote:</P>

<PRE>
I really like to contribute to your pool of Linux-info!
Here's my addendum:

I own a Creative Labs Soundblaster 16. These are the settings:

PORT: 220  IRQ:5  DMA:1,5

Now for the problem: make menuconfig has a default IRQ 7. As you
can see, mine is 5. The menu refuses to change the IRQ to 5!!! My
solution: stick with the 7 for now. As you have configured the whole
thing, close the menu, and edit the .config-file manually. This way you
can set the IRQ to 5, and everything goes as planned!
</PRE>

<P>Just leaving like that didn't work for me, but I have a strange
system that has a lot of stuff that doesn't work without some extra
configuration. He also wrote that doing a <B><TT>cat
/dev/sndstat</TT></B> will show all the information about your
soundcard.</P>

<A NAME="mutant"></A>
<H4><A NAME="19">Mutant Soundcards</A></H4>

<P>If you have a weird mutant soundcard from some obscure company,
take a look at <A HREF="submissions/AaronKuhn-OPL3">this text file</A>
written by <A HREF="mailto:[e-mail]">Aaron Kuhn</A>. It was too
long to include here and convert to nice HTML so I thought I'd leave
it in its unmodified glory. :-)</P>

<HR>

<P>Questions, comments, suggestions? This is currently in a
development stage of Beta, which means it's not guaranteed to work yet
but I'm pretty sure it will work. If it works for you, please let me
know. My e-mail address is <A
HREF="mailto:[e-mail]">[e-mail]</A>.</P>

<HR>

<P><B><FONT SIZE="-1">Copyright &copy; 1997-1999 <A
HREF="mailto:[e-mail]">Joshua Go
([e-mail])</A>. All rights reserved. Permission to use,
distribute, and copy this document is hereby granted. You may modify
this document as long as credit to me is given.</FONT></B></P>

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