Multimedia :: Soundblaster Audigy SE trouble on DSL 2.3

My onboard sound has not been working since v1.4 so I've decided to buy a SB Audigy SE.

The card is recognised during booting but the driver is unknown (in the same line, displayed during booting), no sound.

I tried alsadebs.dsl (after booting with dsl alsa, gnu-utils.dsl and dsl-dpkg.dsl) but it closes the terminal window without doing its job, no sound.

I even tried alsa.dsl (after gnu-utils.dsl) although it is not for this version. It does not recognise the card, no luck again.

I've also tried

Code Sample

dsl@box:~$ sudo modprobe sb
/lib/modules/2.4.26/kernel/drivers/sound/sb.o: init_module: No such device
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
/lib/modules/2.4.26/kernel/drivers/sound/sb.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.26/kernel/drivers/sound/sb.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.26/kernel/drivers/sound/sb.o: insmod sb failed
dsl@box:~$

Please help me to move on from DSL 1.4...

To make some progress, now I am using an older SB card from my other PC.

When testing things I boot with 'dsl nousb' to speed up booting. When doing so, the older card was recognised and sound was OK without any further settings.

Interestingly when I rebooted and this time did not use the nousb cheatcode, the soundcard was NOT recognised. This means that something to do with USB prevents recognition of the SB card. Well, the only USB device I have is a Logitech webcam (with a built-in microphone). Even though I don't consider it to be a "sound card" I unplugged it and guess what, on the next reboot the SB card was picked up successfully.

Bottomline: a webcam with microphone on the USB port interferes with the soundcard recognition.

I might now swap the soundcards back and see if the Audigy SE is recognised when the USB webcam is unpluged... Some other time.

For completeness, I am back to the on-board sound with DSL 2.3 using ALSA (Dell Dimension 8300). It works perfecty provided that the Logitech QuickCam Communicate STX USB webcam is unplugged when booting.

original here.