Speaker question

[Matthew Miller]

On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 11:44:37PM +0000, William W. Austin wrote:
> My wife is planning to "surprise" me with a new set of speakers for my  
> main linux box (she's a professional musician), and she wants to get me  
> the Logitech Z-5500 digital speakers (I'm using an Audigy2 ZS card with  
> some older 5.1 speakers which are failing).  I like the sound, but I  
> don't want to shell out that much if most of the "features" are  
> inaccessible under linux.

I don't know about that particular one, but I've got earlier Sound Blaster
digital speakers, and while they work fine, the ALSA controls are a *mess*
-- there's several dozen sets of two sliders all marked "EMU10K1 PCM", and
then another several dozen sets of twelve sliders marked "EMU10K1 PCM Send".
And what's worse, adjusting some of those twelve sliders makes the
sound noticeably better -- but they get reset all of the time. There's
probably a solution for this out there somewhere, but I'm baffled.
(Especially since the labels are completely less than helpful.)

Oh, and plus, the Master Volume slider is now meaningless -- it apparently
only controls the analog out.

So, in short, my experience isn't too little support for features, but way,
way, too much. :)

> that don't work or that (surprisingly) do?  In particular has anyone  
> had any luck hooking up both the optical *and* coax (so that I can  
> share the speakers with a second system)?  And finally is the Dolby  
> decoding accessible under linux?

I don't think mine do Dolby decoding. And I haven't tried hooking up the
multiple inputs. My guess is the former isn't supported but the latter works
just fine.

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>
Current office temperature: 80 degrees Fahrenheit.