[ale] PCI sound cards (es138[01]

[Jason Boyles]

Several months ago I posted a query to the ale list about PCI sound
cards and Linux asking for some suggestions on models to buy. There 
were none offered, but some folks asked me to update the list if I
ever got a PCI sound card and used it under Linux.

A week ago in a moment of weakness I bought a Soundblaster PCI64
sound card for ~$99 at CompUSA. I know, CompUSA is a horrid
computer store. The sales folks are surly, and sometimes downright evil,
but it was too tempting to ignore.

If you peel the "Soundblaster PCI64" sticker off the one large
chip on this card you'll see that it's actually an Ensoniq
es1370 or 1371. Alan Cox recently merged drivers for these cards
into his 10[56]ac[1234] patches, so I thought I'd give it a spin.
If it failed to work under Linux at least it would improve my
Win95 sound.

The driver and the card work great. The card itself has three internal
audio inputs: one for CD audio, TV card audio, and a modem audio in/out
connector, so now I can have my bt848 card and CD player connected
internally.

The card supports quadrophonic sound if you opt to give up your
external line in for an audio out (configurable via module load
options). I can play two stereo MP3s simultaneously by directing
one player to send audio to /dev/dsp and the other to /dev/dsp2.
It also features a joystick port which the Linux driver does support.

The driver also gives you control over your microphone jack's impedence
if you have a need to tweak that.

There are several drawbacks to this card. One is that
the driver does not support ulaw encoded
sound, i.e. "cat sound.au > /dev/audio" will not work. The reason
for this is because the card has no hardware  support for these
audio formats. This is not too much of a problem for me, as ulaw encoding
is very low quality anyway and sox with its "play" script works quite well.
for converting ulaw to WAV on the fly.

Secondly, the card has no synthesis engine (FM or otherwise) on board.
Most cards leave this to their drivers these days. So if you want to play
MIDI files you'll have to use something like Timidity.

Thirdly, there is only low level MIDI support in the driver; basically
a raw interface to the MIDI UART that is included on the card.

The card works great for me, but may present a problem if you
listen to midi files locally or intend use it for MIDI sequencing to 
external MIDI devices. It is cheap, and you get quadrophonic
sound under Win95/Linux, with DirectSound3D support under Win95
(Unreal is awesome with this card, BTW).

If you can tolerate these shortcomings, and you're looking for a PCI
sound card, go buy it. Just not at CompUSA.

----
Jason Boyles <jason at alltel.net>