CS46xx woes.

CS46xx woes.

[Richard Olsson]

Hi.

I just upgraded my ALSA from 0.9.0rc2 to 0.9.0rc5 and my sound went from
"ok" to "very bad".  I've got a Hercules Gametheater XP with the CS4630
chip.  The volume (with same mixer settings before, including PCM at max
74% due to disorted sound at higher settings) is generally lower, and
also weaker, and sounds quite a bit worse too.  I also tried the
2002-11-15 CVS snapshot with the same results.

One strange thing is that in alsamixer the chipset line is "Cirrus Logic
CS4294 rev 5,Cirrus Logic CS4294 rev 5" which seems a bit wrong.

Kernel used is 2.4.19; compiled with GCC 3.2 etc in Gentoo 1.4,
shouldn't matter I guess.

"lspci -vv" says:
00:0d.0 Multimedia audio controller: Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24
[CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Unknown device 1681:0050
        Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop-
ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
        Status: Cap+ 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=slow >TAbort-
<TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR+
        Latency: 32 (1000ns min, 6000ns max)
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 5
        Region 0: Memory at db200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
[size=4K]
        Region 1: Memory at db100000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
[size=1M]
        Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA
PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

Anyone else noticed this?

Thanks, and keep up the good work:)

-- 
Richard Olsson
home: flame@home.se
WWW: http://www.nyo-box.net/


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Re: CS46xx woes.

[Benny Sjostrand]

> I just upgraded my ALSA from 0.9.0rc2 to 0.9.0rc5 and my sound went from
> "ok" to "very bad".  I've got a Hercules Gametheater XP with the CS4630
> chip.  The volume (with same mixer settings before, including PCM at max
> 74% due to disorted sound at higher settings) is generally lower, and
> also weaker, and sounds quite a bit worse too.  I also tried the
> 2002-11-15 CVS snapshot with the same results.
>

Considerating the Hercules Gametheater XP breakout box as a cheap
construction the soundquality you will get from the analog output,
speakers, headphones, etc. will never be very good. (But using the
SPDIF output to an external receiver works great, at least forme -:) )

About you sound-experience, sounds like there some trouble with
the soundcard amplifier, you would experience this kind of trouble
if it for some reason have been turned of (which in theory should
not happen with rc5 or latest CVS)
Actually there was a hack related to the CD-input, which turned
of the amplifier when CD-line input was unmuted. Could you
try with rc2 and latest CVS to unmute CD-input and test
you hear any diference, if you can disconnect the CD-input cable
physically from the soundcard, and see if you hear any diference ?

> One strange thing is that in alsamixer the chipset line is "Cirrus Logic
> CS4294 rev 5,Cirrus Logic CS4294 rev 5" which seems a bit wrong.
>

The GTXP has two CS4294 codec's, look's OK to me.

/Benny



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Re: CS46xx woes.

[Richard Olsson]

> Considerating the Hercules Gametheater XP breakout box as a cheap
> construction the soundquality you will get from the analog output,
> speakers, headphones, etc. will never be very good. (But using the
> SPDIF output to an external receiver works great, at least forme -:) )

Heh; I haven't noticed anything bad with it while using Windows, but
then again I don't set so high standards. ;)

> About you sound-experience, sounds like there some trouble with
> the soundcard amplifier, you would experience this kind of trouble
> if it for some reason have been turned of (which in theory should
> not happen with rc5 or latest CVS)
> Actually there was a hack related to the CD-input, which turned
> of the amplifier when CD-line input was unmuted. Could you
> try with rc2 and latest CVS to unmute CD-input and test
> you hear any diference, if you can disconnect the CD-input cable
> physically from the soundcard, and see if you hear any diference ?

Hmm; with rc2 if I unmute the cd input the amplifier seems to get
disabled sometimes (thus resulting in very badly disorted sound), but
using latest CVS nothing happens.

-- 
Richard Olsson
home: flame@home.se
WWW: http://www.nyo-box.net/


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Re: CS46xx woes.

[Benny Sjostrand]

>
>
>Heh; I haven't noticed anything bad with it while using Windows, but
>then again I don't set so high standards. ;)
>  
>
It was long a time since I tested this card with Windows, so I really dont
have any good point of comparison.  
Depending of what you are playing sound get's distorcionated when
PCM volume is higher ~75%, dont known it's possible to get it better.
We probably never going to known whatever magic is done in the Windows 
driver.

>Hmm; with rc2 if I unmute the cd input the amplifier seems to get
>disabled sometimes (thus resulting in very badly disorted sound), but
>using latest CVS nothing happens.
>
OK. confirmed, thanks for testing it out.

/Benny



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