Linux Experts please..... (PS3 Linux and ALSA)

[asong26]

I posted this earlier else where, but I thought I post it here as well. It think this is the only thing that is missing on most of PS3 Linux Howto's....

ALSA (Advance Linux Sound Architecture)

OK... I think I know why some people, including myself are having trouble with Linux ALSA. I think based on the way our linux is set up by default, the hardware (in this case is SPEs emulating a card?) isn't defined correctly in the configuration files. Many people, including myself are getting mixed results with Audio when apps such as VLC, or Mplayer is used. OSS is the one that people are most often using because ALSA either doesn't initialize, or sounds plain crappy.

I think the issue is that direct ALSA device must be defined correctly in /etc/modules.conf file. If you open that up, it's showing the following for the ALSA module:

# ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd
# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore

The question is, what is the right setting to let Linux (YDL, Gentoo, etc...,) know what they are? I tried running modprobe, but no avail. I get nothing. I think the OSS driver that we are currently using is an emulated sound that is part of the ALSA that's built into the kernel. This is fine for default Desktop Mangers, but when other apps are trying to access the hardware directly (such as VLC or MPlayer) using ALSA, it craps out.

Anyone know how to fix this? Also, if you somehow have ALSA running / working flawlessly, please take a look at this file, and let me know how it's setup. One other place you might look is in /etc/modules.d/alsa

That file has the same entry in it. If anyone is knowledgeable as to what the current settings are doing, please share with us, so that we can squeeze further audio optimzation out of this thing.

Thanks.