Need help getting sound blaster live to work instead of onboard sound
 

Hiya

Well I'm a newbie to linux and it's working great and all but Linux is using my onboard sound instead of my soundblaster live and I can't figure out a way to change sound cards... (heck it practically wont let me do much at all in gnome... is KDE better?) thanks for your time :)

JakeWolf

The option for using the onboard sound is most likely located in your bios. I don't know what type of motherboard you are using, but on all of the motherboards that I have used you just disable onboard sound through the bios, and then you are able to add the drivers that you need for your soundcard.

Linux usually finds the new hardware at boot time, so you might already have your drivers loaded for the card you want to use. You just need to disable the onboard sound first.

I hope this helps.

Oh, and as to the question about Gnome and KDE, I think it is just a matter of preference. But, the KDE control panel gives you a lot of options (graphical) that you don't fine in Gnome... at least I haven't found them in Gnome. I'm a newbie too, to Linux so someone with more experience with both desktops could probably answer this better.
:Pengy:

Just one thing.... make sure when you disable onboard sound, that the (old) soundmodule wont get started anymore.

KDE? Well, I have not been a fan of KDE 2.2, so I used GNOME, because it looks better and it was faster (at least to me). But with SuSe 8, there is KDE 3 which is A LOT faster and... err... Antialiased fonts are just a beauty :cool:
But hey, this is really a thing of preference... You should try out GNOME 2 once it comes out. I AM excited (May 22 as far as I know)

hey cool, just did that and I'll check back to see whether or not it works. Is there a way to upgrade KDE or gnome without installing an entirely new version?

JW

well it didn't work, all linux noted that it failed to load sound now =p

If you have the sound blaster board loaded into your box, try making linux load a sound blaster module instead of your onboard module. Otherwise you can disable the onboard sound directly on the motherboard by checking your manual, but the general procedure is to find the sound module on the motherboard and reset the jumper next to it. After you do that you need to make sure that Linux loads your Sound Blaster drivers instead of the onboard audio drivers at startup.

well for some reason KDE works with the SB Live, so that's good, just not gnome. Sound is a little fuzzy with some mp3s but I think I can live ^-^ thanks for all the advice and such, and nice quote for your sig :) any ideas what would cause the sound not to be as crisp as it once was?

JW

There should a program called sound mixer somewhere on the K menu. Try adjusting the volume, bass, treble controls in the mixer, until you are satisfied with the sound.

Gnome is kinda screwy.... at least in my case. I could connect to the internet but I couldn't do anything on the internet because nothing was going through the connection, so I switched to KDE and everything has been fine ever since. Gnome also couldn't use my SB16 card that I have installed in this box and that was kinda annoying.

I have a quick question for X11 or anyone else who would know the answer to this, is there anyway to save the configuration, or do I always have to mute the speaker setting to stop getting this really annoying buzzing and clicking whilist not playing mp3s. That happens in both console and KDE. When I mute it I can play sound from mp3's and whatnot still, but it's a pain in the butt to have to call up mixer every login and mute the pc speaker.