[Alsa-user] Newbie: How to use ALSA with a SB LiveDrive

[Steve F. <sf...@es...>]

Hi all,

I'm the IT person at a small college radio station, and we're looking to 
get streaming going.  I have a preference for all this unix, so I chose to 
build a linux box out of donated equipment.  The sound card we're using is 
a SB Live with a LiveDrive.  I'm not very familiar with it, truth be told, 
and I've had a lot of difficulty getting it working.  I decided to use the 
ALSA drivers because of the good reviews I've seen elsewhere, and my 
experience with CB's emu10k1 driver off of SoundForge was rather miserable.

Onto the point:  We're inputting our broadcast via the SPDIF RCA input on 
the LiveDrive.  The streaming software I'm using (DarkIce) is reading from 
the device (/dev/dsp) [I'm not certain that's the right device in this 
particular case, but that's what the DarkIce docs say to use].  The drivers 
load fine, DarkIce loads fine, but we don't get any sound.

I've used amixer to set the device to record (I think), using this command 
line:

amixer -c 0 sset "Line LiveDrive",0 90%,90% rec

But we still don't get any sound.  I've also tried switching to 
"LineDrive",1 instead, no luck.  Here's the output from that command:

Simple mixer control 'Line LiveDrive',0
   Capabilities: pvolume cvolume cswitch
   Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
   Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
   Limits: Playback 0 - 100 Capture 0 - 100
   Front Left: Playback 90 [90%] Capture 90 [90%] [on]
   Front Right: Playback 90 [90%] Capture 90 [90%] [on]

I'm getting pretty frustrated, so if anyone can help, I'd really appreciate it.

-- Steve