I am working witn an amd 1800xp processor, and have two Hauppauge! video cards, and two SB Live cards.

The first Hauppauge! card is a WinTV dbx-TV Stereo and FM radio (model 401) card. This is plugged internally into the Aux port on the first SB Live card (stereo cd cord from one to the other.) My cd-rw drive is connected via the spidf cable to the same card.

My second Hauppauge! card is a WinTV GO card that I bought about a year ago. It is pluged into the Line port on the back of the second SB Live card.

At this time I have gotten the sound to work out of the first TV card. Both in recording and in live play. I did have to use the asusmixer program to adjust the levels, and select Aux as the capture source (muted with Capture brought up to 100%)

So far I am unable to hear audio at all out of the second Hauppauge! card.

I suspect that the WinTV Go card does not have a functioning btaudio chipset, as I have never heard audio from the /dev/dsp(x) options with this card in. Since I have recording on this card set to /dev/dsp2 (should be digital dsp for second capture card) I think this explains why I am not hearing anything in recordings.

Am I correct in understanding that the only way I am going to hear audio out on this setup when watching live playback is to plug my audio patch cord (to the amp/distribution center) into the headphone out of the second card, and adjust the 'asusmixer -c 1' settings as appropriate for the second card? My presumption is that the system is not patching the audio from the second sound card through the backplane to the first soundcard.

Note that the aumix program does not list an Aux port for the SB Live card, and I have not seen a convienent way of selecting the second SB Live card, so I am not sure that changes made here are either appropriate, nor do I expect such changes to be persistent.

Thank you for any assistance you may provide.

Currently using the R4 distribution KnoppMyth disk. Asside from the issues I have noted so far, it seems to be functioning as I would exect.

Well first thing in your current configuration forget about btaudio you do not need it. If one of the cards does support btadio you can remove one of the soundcards and save yourself a bunch of headaches.

I don't see why this would not work. You may have to do some stuff in the modules.conf file. I would check the documentation over at alsa-project.org for how to setup two soundcards, and how to access the second card with aumix or alsamixer.

Running into one annoying problem in that I can not test either board for btaudio capabilities, as someone chose not to include the package that includes aplay (alsa-utils?) and for whatever reason I can't install it either. (can't confirm that that is the package either as the search functions for package contents at Debian appear to be down.)

I also can't save the settings as a result, (the appropriate tool is not included in R4) which means that every time I add, or remove hardware as part of testing, I loose all the settings. Getting unreasonably good at pressing the nub of a button for the left 'Alt' key on my keyboard as a result.

I stopped into a Micro Center and picked up a second 401 board. replaced the WinTV Go board with it, and have confirmed that I can get audio out of it by plugging it into the line in port on the back of the '0' sound card. So, now with a bit of annoyance I can possibly listen to what I am watching on card two while capturing on card one. However I still have not been able to confirm that I won't incidentally capture audio from card 2 onto the recording from card 1. This is where directly capturing the btaudio would be handy in my opinion. I would be unhappy if I were forced to go spend another $300 on two pvr-250's just to be able to record two shows at once.

I really dispise the level of help of "go take a look at the forums on alsa.org for help on configuring two sound cards". If you know it's there, a link to a thread, or how to would be most appreciated. It's not that I doubt that the information is there, it's that suggesting it's there, without any more help than look at a domain, is like saying "Go Google for it" (Google disallows searching for the word 'it' as the word is used all too often for use as an effective search term.)

An example of a potentially useful starting point would be http://www.djcj.org/LAU/guide/Sound-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.4 which confirms that the use of two or more sound cards is possible under Linux. It's not particularly useful in that it is talking about technology that is several years out of date, bub it's a starting point.

well since this is community support I'd say pointing you in the right direction is not too bad. I am not even one of the developers, and I have never personally used two sound cards in one machine, but I do remember when I was setting up alsa on one of my systems a while back the detail page had some stuff on it about setting up two cards. That page happened to be for my turtle beach santa cruz, but the info for that part seemed to be generic.

The thing with community support is many times people haven't done what you are trying to do and why should we go spend alot of time fixing a problem that we don't and probably never will have, but if we have some ideas where to look we try to point you in the right direction, and I ususally try to include a link, but I was in a bit of a hurry earlier.

as for btaudio support the only thing I know about it is in the mythtv documentation here

Have you tried using btaudio? The model 401 does support this. Use aumix to set and save your sound values. You wouldn't have to get 2 250s, just one and a 401.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Well, I have added the btaudio module to the /etc/modules file, just after bttv, but before tvaudio, (not sure if this matters)

Unfortunately I still can not test this in the manner recomended, because none of the packages included in knoppmyth include aplay, (which is the program recomended to test to see if this will work over at the mythtv help files) 'play' on it's own seems to recognize the device filrs (/dev/dsp[0-3]) just can't figure out what to do with them.

Don't get me wrong, so far I am very impressed with knoppmyth. I was able to get Freevo to the point I could use it as a channel guide, and changer. Compared to being able to actually record two programs at once (alibet so far only one with audio..) is to me a significant improvement.

This link may help:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/mailarc/gforum.cgi?post=55962#55962

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cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

That helped tremendously. Thanks.

The only things I had to change that were just touched on, not explained were to move the snd-xxxx lines up above btaudio in the modules file, and make sure all of them ended up before the bttv line.

I now get proper audio recording from both video cards, and have eliminated one of the sound cards.

Hmm... Anyone need a sound card, WinTV Go, and a 27" tv? Well, maybe I can come up with a use for the WinTV Go card...

-Rusty

You're welcome. Sounds like you have the start for a slave backend!

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!