good sound cards for linux/PC

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

I’m giving up on trying to get my new Ubuntu Desktop (dual boot, with Win XP) to read the existing sound card (Mia MIDI). The card was never advertised to work with Linux to begin with, and while I can locate it via “aplay -l”, it doesn’t appear with “sudo lspci” nor with the systems gui for sound controls.

Shopping for a new card now and wanted to check for recommendations!

A lot of what I am uncovering via search does not seem to list clearly if it works under Linux.

I am missing “Computers & Music” – an SF store that was my go-to place for many years. It folded a couple years ago, and this year my backup, “Leo’s Pro Audio” also closed its doors.

It would be good to have stereo in as well as out, and MIDI in/out. But I might settle for decent stereo out, and not try to migrate my DAW (Sonar HomeStudio) and scoring/notation work (Finale) from Windows to Linux.

#2

A good sound cards for linux, has a fully working supported official driver :slight_smile:

#3

… ha ha ha ha … good one! ;D

But seriously, most onboard sound should work for a start. Phil, have you not got any audio built into the motherboard?

In terms of better / pro-audio cards, two pages worth looking at are the ALSA soundcard matrix and the Linux Musicians hardware page.

Interesting to note that the Echo Mia should be supported, but does require its firmware to be installed - have you installed the linux-firmware package from the Ubuntu repo. You’ll notice here that the firmware for lots of Echo soundcards are listed. Mind you, has Mia but not Mia MIDI - not sure if that’s an issue. You’ll also probably want the alsa-tools-gui package which gives you echomixer to control the thing.

In terms of other soundcards, anything that’s USB 1.1 audio class compliant (ie. doesn’t require a driver on Windows) should also work out of the box on Linux. USB 2 interfaces are a bit more hit and miss.

I use a separate 1x1 MIDI interface (Edirol UM-1ex) - again look for something that’s USB class compliant and you shouldn’t have an issue.

I haven’t used a desktop for years, so less sure about the PCI options. The M-Audio range should be pretty solid, as with anything else that uses an ice1712 chip internally - I had a DSP2000 years ago. RME cards are also meant to be well supported.

I have a FireWire card (Edirol FA-101) for my laptop that works great. However, FireWire cards are JACK only, so although there is a PulseAudio to JACK bridge it’s not ideal for working with JavaSound or other non-pro-audio software. You could also use (shameless plug! :wink: ) my JAudioLibs’ JNAJack bindings to work directly with JACK from Java.

Speaking of JACK, it’s also possible to use it on Windows, which together with JNAJack would allow you to interact with any ASIO software (presume Sonar can do ASIO?).

#4

Fortunately linux mint built in audio driver is good (come up with pulseaudio).

#5

There is no such thing as a Linux Mint built in audio driver! All the audio hardware support in Mint comes from ALSA / kernel via Ubuntu. Consumer audio equipment usually works OOTB. Pro-audio stuff (like Phil’s card) is sometimes more awkward to set up, on Ubuntu or Mint.

#6

Errrr okay, I did mean “something than comes along with the ISO, buried inside it, ready to execute, so I can hear sound from my machine while even troubling network connection” :persecutioncomplex: