[Fwd: sound in CURRENT]

[Jon Noack]

Whoa there on the cross-posting...  multimedia@ seems like the best 
place so let's stick with that.

On 08/21/04 23:24, Sean McNeil wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-08-21 at 21:04, Tim Robbins wrote:
>> [long rant snipped]
>> 
>> It's unreasonable to claim that the whole sound system is broken on
>> the basis of one driver not working with your hardware -- I've had
>> no problems whatsoever with sound on my system, using both the
>> onboard sound (VIA 8237/ Analog Devices AD1980 with the snd_via8233
>> driver) and an old Sound Blaster Live! Value card (with the
>> snd_emu10k1 driver).
> 
> Well he mentioned actually 2 different chip sets.  I do not know if
> they are the same driver, though.  I'm using the snd_via8233 as well
> and have terrible sound quality.  Have you played back mp3 files on
> that machine?  Do they sound good completely through?  Mine sounds
> hurried at times.  Like it is getting interrupts too soon.

Disabling PREEMPTION certainly doesn't help interrupt latency.  However, 
I doubt it's the only issue.

It seems like our sound folks are a bit overworked at the moment.  I 
submitted a patch (to the multimedia@ list) way back in February to add 
S/PDIF output to the es137x driver.  Someone said they'd commit it, but 
apparently it got lost in the shuffle.  I opened a PR for it 
(http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/68594) a couple months 
ago.  It's a pretty simple patch; I've been using it for 6 months now 
and have never had a problem with it.

I do not intend to trivialize or marginalize the work the sound folks 
have done, but my point here is that it just seems like we have more 
work than they can handle right now.  This is open source and people 
have other priorities that keep them from making contributions to the 
project.  That is expected.  5.3 is going to be one of the most public 
releases in FreeBSD's history and, to the end user, sound is one of the 
most "visible" systems in FreeBSD.  When people load up 5.3 and 
experience sound issues, it will translate to a negative opinion of 
FreeBSD as a whole.  Sound is like Internet connectivity: it is taken 
for granted but all hell breaks loose when it malfunctions.  We may need 
to make it a higher priority or we'll lose people that otherwise would 
have made valuable contributions.

This is the part of the email where normally the author would ask for 
people to step up and keep FreeBSD on the cutting edge.  As I don't have 
the skills to do the work, I don't feel it's my place to ask anyone else 
to do it either.  What I will do it make a commitment to test patches 
and continue learning all I can.  Perhaps some day I can be the person 
I'm looking for...

Jon