This HOWTO document describes sound support for Linux -- how to configure the kernel, what applications run under Linux that support sound, and answers to frequently asked questions about sound cards. The intent is to bring new users up to speed more quickly and reduce the amount of traffic in the usenet news groups.
The scope is limited to the aspects of sound cards pertaining to Linux. See the other documents listed in the Other Sources of Information section for more general information on sound cards.
Much of this information came from the Readme
files provided
with the sound driver source code, by Hannu Savolainen
(hannu@voxware.pp.fi
). Thanks go to Hannu and the many other
people who developed the Linux kernel sound drivers and utilities.
Thanks to Matt Welsh's Linuxdoc-SGML package, this HOWTO is now available in several formats, all generated from a common source file.
New versions of this document will be periodically posted to
comp.os.linux.announce
. They will also be uploaded to the
various anonymous ftp sites that archive such information including
sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO
.
If you have and suggestions, corrections, or comments on the HOWTO, please send them to the author and I will try to incorporate them in the next release.
The Linux Sound User's Guide covers all of the user visible
aspects of using sound under Linux in much more detail (approximately
40 pages). If you are interested in sound under Linux you should
definitely get this document. The current version is ALPHA 0.1, and is
available on tsx-11.mit.edu
in the directory
/pub/linux/ALPHA/LDP
. I will continue to maintain the
Sound-HOWTO as a concise guide for user's who want to get sound up and
running, or just find out what is required, without having to read the
full user's guide.
Hannu Savolainen has written a draft version of the Hacker's Guide
to VoxWare. The latest version is draft 2, and can be found on
nic.funet.fi
in /pub/OS/linux/ALPHA/sound
.
The following FAQs are regularly posted to the usenet newsgroup
news.announce
as well as being archived at the site
rtfm.mit.edu
in the directory
/pub/usenet/news.answers
:
PCsoundcards/generic-faq (Generic PC Soundcard FAQ) PCsoundcards/soundcard-faq (comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard FAQ) PCsoundcards/gravis-ultrasound/faq (Gravis UltraSound FAQ) audio-fmts/part1 (Audio file format descriptions) audio-fmts/part2 (Audio file format descriptions)
The FAQs also list several product specific mailing lists and archive sites. The following Usenet news groups discuss sound and/or music related issues:
alt.binaries.sounds.misc (Digitized sounds and software) alt.binaries.sounds.d (Discussion and follow-up group) alt.binaries.multimedia (Multimedia sounds and software) alt.sb.programmer (Soundblaster programming topics) comp.multimedia (Multimedia topics) comp.music (Computer music theory and research) comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard (IBM PC soundcard topics)
The Linux Activists mailing list has a SOUND channel. To find out how
to join the mailing list, send mail to
linux-activists-request@joker.cs.hut.fi
.
The Readme
and CHANGELOG
files included with the
kernel sound driver source code contain useful information about the
sound card drivers. These can typically be found in the directory
/usr/src/linux/drivers/sound
.
The Linux Software Map (LSM) is an invaluable reference for
locating Linux software. Searching the LSM for keywords such as
sound is a good way to identify applications related to sound
hardware. The LSM can be found on various anonymous FTP sites,
including sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs/LSM.gz
.
At time of writing, the latest Linux sound driver was version 2.5. It had been submitted to Linus, but had not yet been included in a kernel release.