ASUS Xonar Essence STX, supported?

[cesium]

Xonar d2 is supported in mercurial code (not build 2002) - see http://mercurial.opensound.com/?rev/caabde71b566 . See here how to build OSS4. Not sure if your pci-e would work as is - you may need to edit the driver to recognize the pci subid as a d2.

[reasons]

I'm not fluent in C so I may have not edited it right (don't even have a working linux install ATM, this is all just to see if I should try freebsd), but did it from a live cd and stock and with my edit that probably didn't help, still no sound.

[cesium]

[Edit: It turns out the STX requires some changes in the driver. Michal created a diff which provides some support. Also this diff is needed for .devices file]

[Ollboll]

It works!

I'm now running ossv4 with my STX by compiling the above code and it sounds beautiful

Only problem so far is that I'm hearing a static noise in the background, and since I'm no ossv4 expert I'm not really sure of what could cause it.

The static is present both with and without vmix0 enabled, and have disabled all microphone stuff. It is only when playing sound the static is present.

Maby tomorrow I can test with another sound card to see if it is an issue with the STX-driver or if something is wrong with the OSS itself.

And a little note: If i when testing this code discover something, who should I send what I've found and where?

[cesium]

Michal made the patch, so he's the guy who might answer your question.

[Michal]

@Ollboll I'm glad it works for you. Have you tried other applications to see if static noise disappears? Please try osstest. I'll post some new patches ASAP.

[Ollboll]

Update about the static, when testing closer i realized that the static I heard was also present with the windows ASIO drivers, but to closer test the amount of background static i plugged in the sound card included with my motherboard ( Supreme FX II, using the oss_hdaudio driver ).

Before I tested I reinstalled Ubuntu Lucid RC because I accidentally broke my system with an incorrect uninstall of oss.

I tested with smplayer but focused on mpd because I could with mpd run the same sound off both sound cards att the same time with little fuss. Next step was that i synchronized the output volume with a decibel-meter.

I then tested with the one sound card in each channel to my headphones and them separately.

The result I got is thus:

IF there is background static, it is probably not in the STX driver since I cannot accurately hear a difference of the static between the SupremeFX and the STX outside my placebo error margin. Therefore I cannot but conclude that if there is some static noise it is probably not within the STX driver but within OSS.

And if there was (more) static before my reinstalling of the system, since it is not present now or within my placebo error margin, what i perceived it before it was possibly placebo or due to an incorrect install of OSS.

Next step is to test the SPDIF even though I don't use it myself yet. If i remember correctly the SPDIF should send the signal bit-perfect if vmix is disabled? If so i plan to burrow a receiver and send some Dolby / DTS encoded sound files and see if the receiver gets a correctly encoded signal.

[reasons]

Just compiled with the patches yesterday and it all worked fine, updated ports today and now it is heavily distorted with lower notes. Thought something might have gone wrong (I changed a lot of stuff), and on the reinstall it is all the same.