[Discuss-gnuradio] gr-audio-alsa ready for testing from CVS

[Eric Blossom]

There's a new module available in CVS: gr-audio-alsa.

I'd appreciate it if some of you with fancy (or not so fancy) sound
cards would give this code a try.  I'm particularly looking for a
tester with a card that's got more than 2 input channels.  Something
like a Delta-66 or M-Audio 1010 would be great.

You'll need to use the CVS versions of gnuradio-core, gnuradio-examples
and gr-audio-alsa to test this.  http://comsec.com/wiki?CvsAccess

The code supports cards with arbitrary numbers of input and output
channels and with sample sizes up to 32-bits.

The code checked in has some debugging output enabled.  
It'll tell you what it knows about your hardware, such as supported
sample types, min and max sampling rates, min and max channels.

These examples in gnuradio-examples/python/audio will be useful for
testing:

multi_tone.py -- puts a unique tone out each of the channels of the
  specified hardware.  If you've got a 4, 6 or 8 output card try
  "surround40", "surround5.1", "surround7.1" as the device name.

mono_tone.py -- puts out a single tone.  Checks mono to stereo kludge
for hardware that doesn't natively handle a single output.

audio_copy.py -- connects N input channels to N output channels.

Each of the examples has a --help option.

You'll need to mess around with your audio mixer to get everything set
to reasonable values.  My current favorite mixer is "alsamixer".  It's
a curses application, and it doesn't get confused by fancy hardware.
Check out its man page for instructions.  I discovered that my
hardware had a "mic boost" option that aumix didn't show.

Please let me know of any problems, comments or suggestions.

Thanks,
Eric