Mailing List Archive

First a disclaimer: I have NO experience with the Leadtek card. Anything I
say, I've discovered by reading either other's posts or various websites.

There was a thread a while ago about this very card, which convinced me not
to buy it. In that thread, someone who did claim to have used the card said
that the only way he could get sound from the card was to jumper from the
card to his sound card. He could not get sound through the PCI interface.

I'm currently building a computer system, and at first I planned to use the
Leadtek for my TV tuners. I changed my decision to the Pinnacle PCTV Pro
because of this very issue. I decided this not because of any sound quality
issues, but instead because I want my system to use multiple (3) TV tuners,
and I was worried that I wouldn't have enough sound inputs on my sound card
(actually for me, sound is handled on my motherboard), if I needed one for
each tuner.

I know this isn't much information, but I hope it helps.

Drew

----- Original Message -----
> Please excuse what may be a dumb question.
>
> I have a Leadtek winfast 2000 XP TV card and sound works fine using the
loopback cable out of the back and into the soundcard. However, I am hoping
to put together the highest quality system possible and I have read reports
from people with other cards who report better quality using the btaudio
module to get (what I assume is) sound directly from the card.
>
> Can anyone please confirm that this is what happens, ie with many Hauppage
cards you can get sound directly from the card without the loopback cable,
and also that this is a much higher quality solution?
>
> Also how would I determine whether I can do that with my card? I have
taken the card out and there are no obvious chips with the correct word,
however, is this a good test? "insmod btaudio" works, but nothing obvious
appears as a result. What should happen if I had (say) a hauppage card?
Would a /dev/dsp1 device appear? Or is it only exposed to the bttv driver
which needs to pass it back to the OS in some way...?
>
> Also has anyone noticed any cards which happen to have particularly high
picture and sound quality with TV? (above the norm)
>
> Thanks for any advice.

Update: I set the btsound module to load at startup, and after a reboot (could have been done without, but my logging is setup kind of strange...), dmesg shows three messages about not being about to find the sound chip (one for each of the chips it supports), so I guess I am out of luck

I am assuming that the Pinnacle PCTV supports sound ok then? Does anyone else have any recommendations for a very high quality card with sound over the PCI bus?

I am trying to put together a system which is suitable for integration into a hifi level home theatre (using an M-Audio 410 soundcard, etc). (I also need to try and work out how to get some debug output on dropped frames, etc in order to tune things...)

Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Drew Lenze [mailto:ajlenze@clarkhome.org]
Sent: 20 March 2003 05:10
To: mythtv-users@snowman.net
Subject: [mythtv-users] Re: Leadtek winfast 2000 XP Can I get sound from
bttv directly?


First a disclaimer: I have NO experience with the Leadtek card. Anything I
say, I've discovered by reading either other's posts or various websites.

There was a thread a while ago about this very card, which convinced me not
to buy it. In that thread, someone who did claim to have used the card said
that the only way he could get sound from the card was to jumper from the
card to his sound card. He could not get sound through the PCI interface.

I'm currently building a computer system, and at first I planned to use the
Leadtek for my TV tuners. I changed my decision to the Pinnacle PCTV Pro
because of this very issue. I decided this not because of any sound quality
issues, but instead because I want my system to use multiple (3) TV tuners,
and I was worried that I wouldn't have enough sound inputs on my sound card
(actually for me, sound is handled on my motherboard), if I needed one for
each tuner.

I know this isn't much information, but I hope it helps.

Drew

----- Original Message -----
> Please excuse what may be a dumb question.
>
> I have a Leadtek winfast 2000 XP TV card and sound works fine using the
loopback cable out of the back and into the soundcard. However, I am hoping
to put together the highest quality system possible and I have read reports
from people with other cards who report better quality using the btaudio
module to get (what I assume is) sound directly from the card.
>
> Can anyone please confirm that this is what happens, ie with many Hauppage
cards you can get sound directly from the card without the loopback cable,
and also that this is a much higher quality solution?
>
> Also how would I determine whether I can do that with my card? I have
taken the card out and there are no obvious chips with the correct word,
however, is this a good test? "insmod btaudio" works, but nothing obvious
appears as a result. What should happen if I had (say) a hauppage card?
Would a /dev/dsp1 device appear? Or is it only exposed to the bttv driver
which needs to pass it back to the OS in some way...?
>
> Also has anyone noticed any cards which happen to have particularly high
picture and sound quality with TV? (above the norm)
>
> Thanks for any advice.

_______________________________________________
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mythtv-users@snowman.net
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Edward Wildgoose wrote
> Please excuse what may be a dumb question.
>
> I have a Leadtek winfast 2000 XP TV card and sound works fine using
> the loopback cable out of the back and into the soundcard. However,
> I am hoping to put together the highest quality system possible and
> I have read reports from people with other cards who report better
> quality using the btaudio module to get (what I assume is) sound
> directly from the card.
>
> Can anyone please confirm that this is what happens, ie with many
> Hauppage cards you can get sound directly from the card without the
> loopback cable, and also that this is a much higher quality solution?

I'm currently using the line-in loop on my soundcard as well, and I
haven't really found any flaw in the quality of the audio, but I also
want to look into the btaudio method for sound on my card, which I think
others have gotten working (I have one of the common WinTV cards).

> Also how would I determine whether I can do that with my card? I
> have taken the card out and there are no obvious chips with the
> correct word, however, is this a good test? "insmod btaudio" works,
> but nothing obvious appears as a result. What should happen if I
> had (say) a hauppage card? Would a /dev/dsp1 device appear? Or is
> it only exposed to the bttv driver which needs to pass it back to
> the OS in some way...?

You should be able to find some info in a log file with the results
of loading the btaudio driver. It should say that it loads and some
kind of card detection. I found the following in my log after I did
a "modprobe btaudio":

hazel:/var/log# grep btaudio kern.log
Mar 21 13:16:50 hazel kernel: btaudio: driver version 0.7 loaded [digital+analog]
Mar 21 13:16:50 hazel kernel: btaudio: Bt878 (rev 17) at 00:0a.1, irq: 9, latency: 64, mmio: 0xdddff000
Mar 21 13:16:50 hazel kernel: btaudio: using card config "default"
Mar 21 13:16:50 hazel kernel: btaudio: registered device dsp2 [digital]
Mar 21 13:16:50 hazel kernel: btaudio: registered device dsp3 [analog]
Mar 21 13:16:50 hazel kernel: btaudio: registered device mixer1

If this much works (which it does for me), it might be a good sign
that you can proceed with trying to choose the right device and get
the settings tweaked until it works for you. I intend to search the
archives for references to "btaudio" to see what others have done.

-Chris