ARRRGHHHH! I need help.

I'm setting up a new Myth box and I have a problem with the sound. The TV card is a generic BT8x8 card without a DSP, so the internal audio out on the TV card is connected to the CD IN on the motherboard. The hardware seems to works fine; I can use aplay to play sounds through the ALSA driver, I can use xawtv to watch TV with sound. I can not, however, start xawtv, mute the CD in, and successfully execute aplay /dev/dsp.

This is where it gets weird. If I start watching Live TV, and I set the volume to 50%, the CD to only 5%, and unmute the CD in, it is distorted and LOUD, VERY VERY LOUD! I'm talking blood from the ears loud! The audio that is played is the raw audio feed, it is not in sync with the video.

xawtv doesn't have this problem, I can set the volume to 50% and the CD to 100% and it is a nice respectable listening level; in fact, it is almost too quite.

I originally tried Gentoo with a few different kernels and the ALSA 0.98 drivers, with no luck. I thought maybe the problem was my aggressive CFLAGS so I installed KnopMyth R4. Still no luck.

Anyone have any suggestions?


HARDWARE
Shuttle SK41G
AthlonXP 2400+
512MB PC2700
Maxtor 120 GB HDD
Generic BT8x8 based card

SOFTWARE
KnopMyth R4
via82xx ALSA driver
bttv video driver

is cd in your only option? do you not have a line in port? and I would assume you have gone into alsamixer and set the cd in as the capture device and muted it.

CD IN is the only option I have on my motherboard. It turns out that my cheap BT card overdrives the audio causing the sound to be distorted. I tried different module parameters, mixer settings, sample rates, everything you can think, but the sound was still loud and distorted.

Ultimately, it turns out the solution to my problem is the nice shiny new PVR250 Santa left in my stocking! Woot! And I'm happy to say that everything works fine. The picture is beautiful, the remote control works fine, and best of all, the sound is crystal clear. The only installation problems I had were my fault.

Quattro