[PlanetCCRMA] Getting started, but getting nowhere

[Paul Coccoli]

On 12/26/05, D. R. Evans <doc.evans@gmail.com> wrote:
> Paul Coccoli said the following at 2005-12-24 14:56 :
>
> >
> > For M-Audio cards, you need to use envy24control to adjust levels.
> > The program comes with the alsa-tools package, I think.  If you have
> > the manual for the 1010LT, envy24control is very similar to the mixer
> > program described there.
> >
>
> Yes, envy24control was installed automatically by CCRMA. All the controls
> are set at or very close to maximum audio.
>

Do you see any activity in the monitor mix window?  Regardless of the
slider position, you should see a signal in the first 2 PCM Out
meters.

> > To play a CD, you need to make sure the CD player program you're using
> > is set up to read the digital audio (CDDA) from the disk instead of
> > just playing it and assuming the analog outputs on the CD-ROM drive.
> > I don't know if the default FC3 CD player can do this, but I think
> > XMMS and alsaplayer can.
> >
>
> I'm not sure that I can parse the above properly; anyway, I am using
> alsaplayer. I don't know how to figure out where it thinks it's sending the
> audio, or how to change that. It seems to be reading the CD properly: it
> has downloaded the track information from somewhere and is displaying that,
> and the little slider that progresses as a song play is moving properly.
>

Sorry; I cut myself off.  On older systems, I think CD player programs
sent a command to the CD-ROM drive that started playing the disk.  The
drive used its onboard D/A converter and sent the stereo analog signal
to a 3 or 4 pin connector that was usually connected to the sound
card.  On my delta 66, there is no analog CD connector, so normal CD
player programs start the disk spinning, but I hear no sound. 
Somewhere in alsaplayer, there is a way to have the program itself
read the digital audio off the disk and send it to the soundcard, and
then the soundcard does the D/A conversion.  The option is called
something like CDDA.  On my (admittedly ancient)
RH9/PlanetCCRMA/M-Audio Delta 66 system, that's how I have to play
CDs.

> > BTW, if you're a long time KDE user, why don't you continue to use KDE?
> >
>
> Because I didn't realise that I could :-)
>
> But now I went looking and saw that I have the choice. So I logged in with
> KDE and... there's a message from arts ("artsmessage") at login saying that
> it can't initialise the sound driver ("device can't be opened for playback;
> no such file or directory"). I don't know what that means (or, more to the
> point, how to fix it), but it is obviously bad. Back to Gnome, I guess. Or
> maybe I should just go back to Mandriva?
>
>    Doc
>

I don't know anything about KDE or arts, but I would guess that error
either means 1) the correct modules aren't loaded, 2) arts isn't set
up properly or  3) some other process has the audio device open.

For 1), use "lsmod" to get a list of loaded modules.  You should see
snd-card-ice1712 in the list.  If not, load it with modprobe.
For 2), can't help you.
For 3), close all other sound apps (like the CD player program you
tried), use something like "ps -ef" and look for anything that might
look like a sound app.

If none of this helps you, maybe try the linux-audio-users list. 
There must be some arts users there.