[denial]

Hi,

I'm listening to HD280Pro attached to the onboard sound on an ASUS P5LD2 Deluxe (Realtek ALC882M) running Juk under KDE on Gentoo GNU/Linux. I have intolerable noise, and I can hear that it changes as I move windows around on the desktop.

I'm wondering if there are any known issues with this onboard sound? If so I just need the cheapest decent soundcard option that will cut the noise down to tolerable levels and work well in Linux. I work in a noisy environment anyway, so audiophile quality sound would be wasted. Can anyone recommend an easily available soundcard that meets my needs?

On the other hand are there any here who are using Linux as the operating system on a computer source? If so have you encountered any specific driver/noise issues? Also, have you had better results from ALSA or OSS? Any issues with sound and artsd?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

[Firam]

The noise is the sound of a crapy onboard soundcard. Time to upgrade.

 

[jagorev]

I would suggest the Turtle Beach Audio Advantage Micro. Perfect for noisy computers, since it's an external USB dongle that isolates from all that RF interference. $28, and sounds good...includes headphone (amped), line, and optical output.

 

[denial]

Thanks for the tip, but I should have specified I need something that is fairly easily available in Australia. I can't see anywhere selling the turtle beach advantage. We have a pretty limited range unless we want to go to a lot of trouble, the range is pretty much limited to Creative plus a few outlying brands. A sample is here: http://www.shopbot.com.au/c-104-0-0-1.html

In case of problems, I'd really prefer to deal with somewhere where returns are a realistic possibility.

 

[sgrossklass]

Let's start with the free tweaks: Disable each and every input that may be enabled for playback. Not even onboard sound should be excessively noisy these days.

From what I've seen sound card offerings really aren't too awe-inspiring there down under. The Audigy Value / SE (one card = SB0570, two names) seems to be very new still and may have to be preordered, and I don't know what to make of the "Sound Blaster 5.1" SB0680 (not to be confused with the old Live! 5.1 Digital, SB0220). Seems like this came out together with the Audigy Value and Audigy 4. Anyway, the most promising card of these is the Audigy Value/SE, as it's already supported in ALSA via snd-ca0106 (pull from CVS). The current Audigy 4 (not the SB0400, but the SB0610) does not seem to be supported in snd-emu10k1 yet. Confusing lineup? Yep, Creative has always been rather... creative here.