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X-Fi on XP; onboard in Ubuntu 6.06

N

Noema

Platinum Member
I recently gon an X-Fi XtremeMusic, mainly for gaming but also to listen to my music library which is all in my hard drive encoded as lossless WMA files.

I've been itching to install Linux again in my box (Ubuntu 6.06). However, there's currently no drivers support from Creative for Linux, so there's no way I can use the X-Fi under Ubuntu.

So I was thinking: Currently I have onboard audio disabled in BIOS. Would it be possible to enable it back so that I can use that in Linux (of course I'd have to plug my headphones back and forth but that's no biggie) and disable it in Windows via the device manager so I can keep using the X-Fi when booting to XP to game?

My onboard audio is a Realteck nForce audio. It works fine under Linux as I used to have Ubuntu in my box before getting the X-Fi.

Thanks in advance.
 
It should be fine, since there's no module for the X-Fi Linux will just ignore it so Windows will be the more problematic piece.
 
Personally I have a new favorite setup for listenning for music. Make sure that your sound card support spdif/digital out. Just get rid of that fancy card, run down to walmart buy a cheap 'Sony Home Theater' setup and make sure that supports spdif in. Connect the spdif out on the audio card to spdif in on the receiver and configure alsa to use it.

Best sound quality this side of 500 bucks. 😉
(oh and reencode all those WMA files to Flac.)

Of course I know that's probably not going to happen. Not so hot for Windows gaming, right? To bad.

But ya just leave the onboard activated and Linux will use it automaticly. I don't know how well Windows will react to that though. How would you go about telling Windows which sound card you'd like to use by default?

To bad about Creative also they used to be decently open up until they started with that 3d gaming sound acceleration crap.
 
Originally posted by: drag
Personally I have a new favorite setup for listenning for music. Make sure that your sound card support spdif/digital out. Just get rid of that fancy card, run down to walmart buy a cheap 'Sony Home Theater' setup and make sure that supports spdif in. Connect the spdif out on the audio card to spdif in on the receiver and configure alsa to use it.

Best sound quality this side of 500 bucks. 😉
(oh and reencode all those WMA files to Flac.)

Of course I know that's probably not going to happen. Not so hot for Windows gaming, right? To bad.

But ya just leave the onboard activated and Linux will use it automaticly. I don't know how well Windows will react to that though. How would you go about telling Windows which sound card you'd like to use by default?

To bad about Creative also they used to be decently open up until they started with that 3d gaming sound acceleration crap.
Click to expand...


Well, unfortunately I'm stuck with XP because not only do I game a lot, but also I use my Guitarport to interface my guitar directly to my PC and record in Audacity, and as far as I know, there's no Linux support for the thing and probably never will.

I just re-enabled onboard audio in the BIOS. Windows detected it as new hardware of course but I disabled it in Device Manager, and the X-Fi is working fine. So I suppose Ubuntu won't be a problem. I'll reinstall it tomorrow as soon as I get my partitions worked out.

Thanks a lot for the replies!
 
Alright it sounds like everything should work fine then. The alsa configuration stuff will just ingore the non-functional hardware and setup your onboard sound as the default.

Ah.. so your a audio person. So spdif wouldn't be appropriate since that is only going to be usefull for playback.

Check this site out:
http://ubuntustudio.com/wiki/index.php/Welcome%2C_Musicians%21

It's basicly a wiki made by musicians using Ubuntu and it'll tell you how to setup your distro as a digital audio workstation. There is a community for it and probably a mailing list and/or a IRC channel so you can talk to like-minded people.

That is if your interested in it.

For a decent sound card (if you end up wanting to play around with it more) for audio work there is these envy24-based cards with a special controller application called envy24control like ones from M-audio. I have a Audiophile 2496 which is a older one, but it has nice I/O and is cheap. Other ones like the Delta 1010 can get pretty expensive though. There are a few high end cards like the Hammerfall series supported well by Linux for audio work, but those things are pretty outragious.

If you have like a simple pre-amp or a good mic input on your onboard card or whatnot try plugging it directly into the mic or input on the sound card. I know with my Dad's computer I used a Audigy2 with a breakout box for that sort of thing. There is a interesting little program that may be entertaining to fool around with at the very least. It's called 'Alsa Module Synth' and it sort of like a moog thing. It can take midi input or pcm audio inputs and play around with different filters and inputs and such. It's a ugly little app and a bit difficult to use sometimes, but you can do some cool stuff with it. I like fooling around with the pre-made synths aviable for it and I like the 'computer generated music' they have built using white and pink noise as input with various filters and such.
 
Well, I installed Ubuntu and, for the life of me, I can't get the on board sound to work. It is properly recognized when I type lspci on the console and the drivers are installed, but I just get no sound. Totem and Rythmbox play the files just fine, but I get no sound at all.

Curiosly, Windows is working perfectly. I just disabled the card in device manager and there are no conflicts. I thought it would be the other way around 🙁

I know for a fact the chipset is supported in Linux (it worked fine when I was using Ubuntu 5.10) but now I'm just stumped.
 
u sure the module is loaded? do lsmod and see. also run alsamixer to see if you even have the volume turned on. btw, i'd highly suggest taking your ubuntu support questions over to ubuntuforums.org
 
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