Michael Sullivan wrote:
> Does anyone have any recommendations for a sound card for my PC? Right
> now it has a crappy VIA Technologies VT82C686 AC97 Audio Controller that
> stops working in the middle of playing an MP3 file and comes up missing
> every other reboot. I want something reliable and inexpensive.
> Something that can play midi files (if it's even the sound card that
> does that.) Any suggestions for this?
As I understand it (and I'd love to be proved wrong here)...
When sound cards moved from ISA to PCI, they mostly dropped having
hardware MIDI support. MIDI was dying as a common sound format for
generic PC users, and has retreated back to being mostly for musicians.
(Its big use was in games: CD sound, MP3 sound, and much greater
storage capacities made it obsolete).
The manufacturers hid this by putting MIDI support in the Windows
drivers. This way, they could provide a range of sound banks and keep
costs down. The output is better, the CPUs are fast enough to
handle this without too much overhead, and the PCI bus, unlike the
ISA bus, is efficient enough for this not to slow everything else
down.
There is a Linux program called timidity++ that can use sound banks
to play MIDI files. It works well as a stand-alone player, but it's
never been integrated properly into the sound systems. Although there
has been consistent talk about getting ALSA to use timidity++, I've
yet to see this working.
Timidity++ is part of Fedora Core.
Beyond that, I haven't had to wrestle with your particular sound chip,
so I don't know of any workarounds. (Anyone?)
I tend to use Creative Labs soundcards myself: the SoundBlaster Live!
Player 5.1 OEM is available for £15 from my usual supplier (about
US$27.50 or €22.30) and uses the emu10k1 driver. You might be able to
find a SoundBlaster PCI128, based on the ess1370 or 1371 driver, for
even less.
Hope this helps,
James.
--
E-mail address: james | Whenever [Richard I] returned to England he always
@westexe.demon.co.uk | set out again immediately for the Mediterranean and
| was therefore known as Richard Gare de Lyon.
| -- '1066 and All That'
