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From: tim@indra.com (Timothy W Butler)
Subject: SoundBlaster/sound hints
Message-ID: <E4n5Iv.DDC.0.net@indra.com>
Organization: Indra's Net - Public Internet Access
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 00:32:55 GMT
Lines: 70
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:34554
These are just some things that I found useful while struggling with
my SoundBlaster 16 Vibra on FreeBSD 2.1.6.
Sound Hints
===========
1. You can 'cat /dev/sndstat' to find out the status of the sound devices.
2. Use /dev/MAKEDEV to make sound device files
> cd /dev
> ./MAKEDEV snd0
3. To play an "au" sound file you can just cat it to /dev/audio.
4. If you can't find an .au file but have a .wav file, then use sox to
convert it.
> sox file.wav file.au
5. You can test your midi device with "playmidi". It comes with two
sample MIDI files.
Play MIDI to the fm synthesizer
> playmidi -f demo0002.mid
Play midi to the external MIDI port. You will need some external midi
devices to hear anything, but you can still use it to test the
SoundBlaster MPU device.
> playmidi -e demo002.mid
6. You can control the volume of your sound card with the program
'/usr/sbin/mixer'. This doesn't appear to be documented anywhere, but
gives a usage message with no arguments.
Handy Resources
===============
Creative Labs programming info
------------------------------
http://creative-ok.creaf.com/wwwnew/tech/devcnr/devcnr.html
This has sample source code and the reference manual (in acrobat format)
for the Sound Blaster cards. UNFORTUNATELY it doesn't describe the VIBRA!!!!
For that, I had to find:
OSS/Free
--------
This is the continuing generation of sound devices for Linux and FreeBSD.
I the sources are distributed with Linux by I found some beta sources
that did the trick.
http://www.4front-tech.com/
Linux handbook
--------------
You can glean a lot from the The Linux documents that describe the sound
devices. Because the FreeBSD devices originated from the same source much
of the documentation carries over from Linux.
http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/Sound-HOWTO.html
http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/Sound-Playing-HOWTO.html
FreeBSD Web Site search
-----------------------
You can do a search through the mailing list archives.
http://www.freebsd.org/search.html