On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 07:31:37PM +0100, Heiko Baums wrote:
They are not comparable to usual sound cards like SoundBlaster, because they don't have Stereo or Surround sound. They just have several single input and output channels which can be mixed however you want. And this is just not supported by PA. But it is fully supported by ALSA and envy24control.
Yes. PA doesn't know what to do with the 8 or more identical channels because ALSA doesn't provide any info on how they are supposed to be used, and ALSA is right in doing this as there simply is no such information. The user decides how to wire up the channels. If he wants to use channels 7 and 3 for stereo, and 8,1,6,2,4,5 for 5.1 surround that's entirely possible, as it should be for any pro or semi-pro card. So this could probably be solved if PA would accept some manual configuration in such cases. Maybe it does, but so far apparently no-one knows how to do it. I guess it's just not possible as manual configuration sort of goes against the grain of Lennart's work. One practical solution could be to run PA as a Jack client. Most people using this type of card would be running Jack anyway. Ciao, -- FA There are three of them, and Alleline.