Supported Sound Hardware

# 2 Supported Sound Hardware

Contents of this section

## 2.1 Sound Cards

The following sound cards are supported by the Linux kernel:

- Roland MPU-401 MIDI interface
- AdLib
- SoundBlaster (version 1 and 2) and compatibles, including ThunderBoard and ATI Stereo F/X
- SoundBlaster Pro (version 1 and 2)
- SoundBlaster 16
- ProAudioSpectrum 16 (and the compatible Logitech SoundMan 16)
- Advanced Gravis UltraSound (GUS)
- GUS MAX (2.9 driver and later)
- Microsoft Sound System (2.9 driver and later)
- Personal Sound System (2.9 driver and later)

Other sound cards that are claimed to be compatible with one of the supported sound cards may work if they are hardware (i.e. register level) compatible. Some cards described as "100% SoundBlaster compatible" are not register compatible.

The Sound Galaxy NX Pro is supported as a SoundBlaster compatible. Answer "yes" to the question "Do you want support for the mixer of SG NX Pro" when the sound driver is configured (in versions prior to 2.9 you must manually add `#define __SGNXPRO__` to the sound driver `local.h` file).

The Linux kernel supports the SCSI port provided on some sound cards (e.g. ProAudioSpectrum 16). There is also support for CD-ROM drives attached to the Soundblaster Pro and SoundBlaster 16 CD-ROM port (see the file `/usr/src/linux/drivers/block/README.sbpcd`).

A loadable kernel module to support joystick ports, including those provided on some sound cards, is also available.

Note that the kernel SCSI, CD-ROM, and sound drivers are completely independent of each other.

## 2.2 PC Speaker

An alternate sound driver is available that requires no additional sound hardware; it uses the internal PC speaker. It is mostly software compatible with the sound card driver, but, as might be expected, provides much lower quality output and has much more CPU overhead. The results seem to vary, being dependent on the characteristics of the individual loudspeaker. For more information, see the documentation provided with the release.

The current version is 0.7, and can be found at site `sunsite.unc.edu` in the file `pub/Linux/kernel/patches/console/pcsndrv-0.7.tar.gz`.

## 2.3 Parallel Port

Another option is to build a digital to analog converter using a parallel printer port. This provides better sound quality but still has a lot of CPU overhead. The PC sound driver package mentioned above supports this, and includes instructions for building the necessary hardware.

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