Asus Xonar DX

[symbiont]

Just bought this card a few days ago. Anyone have any luck gettin one running in Ubuntu? and if so how? I'm sortof noobie

[YogiPaolo]

I have had zero luck getting this card to work. I've tried every step in the comprehensive guide (twice) and a from-scratch install. No dice.

This is strange, considering ALSA reports the card fully functional...

I am considering dual booting with another distro to see if things work...

[IceDigger]

I have this card also and can't get it to work on 8 64bit version. Forced to use onboard sound which sucks hardcore.

[in0v8]

Have tried loads of different ways to deal with this card. It will work under 32 bit, but not on my 64 bit install! Card appears with lspci -v, but not aplay -l after full compile and install using latest ALSA drivers, including the pre-release driver by Clemens Ladisch. alsaconf detects it and claims configuration but afterwards alsamixer can't find it.

Have also tried the OSS route on 64 bit. This installs, identifies the sound chip but will not allow sound output. ossinfo says it's there, ossxmix will allow adjustment of volume levels, osstest appears to do just that - but still no output!

The 32 bit install creates a file /etc/asound.state with details of the card - this hasn't yet happened on my 64 bit efforts.

Suggestions would be welcome!

[YogiPaolo]

I have seen reports on this forum that people have used the xonar D1/2/U2 cards with no problems out of the box. There must be some electronic difference between the DX and other cards....

I have had very weird results installing alsa from source.

alsaconf will detect the card and say that it is configuring. It will complete with no complaints, then when I re-initialize the sound system using /etc/init.d/asound restart, the system complains that there is no card.

Also, asoundconf will not detect the card.

This might be a problem with using the "pure" alsa driver vs the ubuntufied alsa system.

I'm not finding any clear description of how the sound system works and the differences between the ubuntu implementation and the way alsa is set up. I'll have to do more reading.

[in0v8]

Are you on 32 or 64 bit, YogiPaolo? I have the card working on 32 bit Gutsy but no go on 64 bit Hardy. You are right that there are differences between the cards you mention: nobody appears to report difficulties with the D2, which is a PCI card.

The DX has an extra chip to overcome the fact that the soundchip itself isn't PCIe compatible: 'The Xonar's Oxygen HD audio chip wasn't designed for PCI Express, so Asus uses a bridge chip from PLX to adapt it to the PCIe interface' (from the review here: http://techreport.com/articles.x/14500). This chip is identified with lspci -v, where it is reported as 'PCI bridge: PLX technology' on both my 32 and 64 bit installs.

Thing is, the card works on 32 bit Gutsy, using the pre-release driver from the ALSA project website: http://www.alsa-project.org/~clemens...080415.tar.bz2 - so is this a Hardy problem?