Sound works well under Freebsd, and has done for a long time. But I am worried.
In my household there are two laptops, one running FreeBSD (the other, windows). Sound works out of the box. But the speakers on both laptops are beginning to be no good. Quiet, a bit tinny, one side does not work and stuff like that.
On my desktop, running FreeBSD, I have got a loudspeaker set plugged into the soundcard jack. Two piddly little speakers and a so called sub-woofer. Cheap, a few years old, and reasonable. But no great sound.
Now, on any or all machines, how can I change the loudspeakers? On the windows laptop, I merely turn on a cheapo bluetooth loudspeaker, and it all works.
But what about FreeBSD? It is not so easy to get loudspeakers that plug into the sound card any more. There still are a few for sale, but not a great choice, and fewer than previously.
The only real choice for buying new speakers is bluetooth. Useful in that you can have them anywhere in the room. Unfortunately under FreeBSD, bluetooth is rather krap. It does not work out of the box. I have followed the handbook, and after installing iwmbt-firmware, virtual_oss and starting three services -
After running
I might well sort this out. I might not. Maybe someone here can suggest.
But still, what a right palava? And what if I get a new flashy expensive bluetooth set of loudspeakers, are they going to work?
So I am a bit worried.
Over the last few years, the ease of getting X to run on most machines has improved no end. I am glad to have a desktop that I can use. But a large part of the desktop experience is with sound. Music, conferencing, films, stuff like that.
Bluetooth and the availability of loudspeakers, is a bit unknown in the future of FreeBSD.
In my household there are two laptops, one running FreeBSD (the other, windows). Sound works out of the box. But the speakers on both laptops are beginning to be no good. Quiet, a bit tinny, one side does not work and stuff like that.
On my desktop, running FreeBSD, I have got a loudspeaker set plugged into the soundcard jack. Two piddly little speakers and a so called sub-woofer. Cheap, a few years old, and reasonable. But no great sound.
Now, on any or all machines, how can I change the loudspeakers? On the windows laptop, I merely turn on a cheapo bluetooth loudspeaker, and it all works.
But what about FreeBSD? It is not so easy to get loudspeakers that plug into the sound card any more. There still are a few for sale, but not a great choice, and fewer than previously.
The only real choice for buying new speakers is bluetooth. Useful in that you can have them anywhere in the room. Unfortunately under FreeBSD, bluetooth is rather krap. It does not work out of the box. I have followed the handbook, and after installing iwmbt-firmware, virtual_oss and starting three services -
hcsecd
, bluetooth
, sdpd
- I can pair with a bluetooth loudspeaker. But I cannot play any music through it. After running
virtual_oss -C 2 -c 2 -r 48000 -b 16 -s 768 -R /dev/null -P /dev/bluetooth/black_speakers -d dsp
the bluetooth loudspeaker dings and dongs and I get the repeating errorbackend_bt: PSM=0x19
backend_bt: Cannot get capabilities
backend_bt: DISCOVER FAILED
I might well sort this out. I might not. Maybe someone here can suggest.
But still, what a right palava? And what if I get a new flashy expensive bluetooth set of loudspeakers, are they going to work?
So I am a bit worried.
Over the last few years, the ease of getting X to run on most machines has improved no end. I am glad to have a desktop that I can use. But a large part of the desktop experience is with sound. Music, conferencing, films, stuff like that.
Bluetooth and the availability of loudspeakers, is a bit unknown in the future of FreeBSD.