Perhaps I'm not skilled at searching, but I've looked high and low and can't find any information on configuring a second sound card. For that reason, I am soliciting assistance:

I've just added an AITech Wave tuner (bttv) to be the second tuner in my Knoppmyth box. The other tuner is an ATI TV Wonder VE. Both tuners require sending sound from the tuner to line in on the soundcard. The ATI TV Wonder VE is going to onboard sound and works great. The AITech Wave is going to a newly added TurtleBeach PCI sound card.

An 'lspci | grep audio' provides this info:

00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Sound Controller (rev a0)
00:0f.0 Multimedia audio controller: Aureal Semiconductor Vortex 2 (rev fe)

I've configured the ATI TV Wonder to grab sound from /dev/dsp (which is linked to /dev/dsp0) and the AITech Wave is set for /dev/dsp1 . When watching Live TV (or recorded programs), from the ATI TV Wonder source, the sound is fine. When recording or watching live tv with the AITech Wave source, the sound is that of /dev/dsp (ie, wrong audio source). When recording from the AITech, sound is not available while watching live TV with the ATI Tv Wonder. I'm assuming this is because the device is in use (wrongly) by the AITech device. When the recording is completed/killed, sound begins working again on the TV Wonder.

Obviously, I am not doing something right in setting up the second sound card. Any ideas?

TIA

Wow! I had originally thought that adding a second bttv card was commonplace, and thus adding a second sound card would be fairly straight forward. Apparently, this is not the case. I've continued searching and also monitoring this thread (which is fruitless at the moment).

I've found one page that kind of dances around how to get both sound cards working at the same time, but it is not as straightforward as I would need it to be (being a linux newbie). It mentions file locations for important files that do not appear in the knoppmyth/knoppix(?) distro. Is the Debian '/etc/alsa/modutils/1.0' the same as '/etc/modutils/alsa-0.9-knoppix' under knoppmyth? I've attempted to follow the instructions presented, but still no sound.

Here is the page to which I am referring:

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=MultipleCards

On another note, I have removed the Aureal card and replaced it with a C-media card. When I run '/etc/init.d/alsa-autoconfig' it does recognize the C-media card and updates
'/etc/modutils/alsa-0.9-knoppix' with those values. It does not, however, add the entries for my onboard sound.

Here is a new 'lspci | grep audio':

00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Sound Controller (rev a0)
00:0f.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CM8738 (rev 10)

I am running this past all of you in the hopes that someone may be able to lead me down the right path. I have scoured the alsa mailing lists for answers, but the web interface is a bit obtuse. Surely someone has used this sort of setup.

TIA

I feel like I'm talking to myself! I've finally solved the problems I was having with addng the additonal sound card. I'm posting this reply to document how I got it working for anyone who may travel down this path in the future.

Before I installed the pci card, I did an '/etc/init.d/alsa-config' to get the settings for my onboard sound. Here is what was generated in /etc/modutils/alsa-0.9-knoppix :

# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF version 0.9.0-knoppix ---
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
options snd major=116 cards_limit=1 device_gid=29 device_mode=0660
options snd-intel8x0 index=0
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---

I copied this file to alsa-onboard.conf

I then disabled onboard sound in the bios and installed the pci card and ran alsa-config again to get the settings for the pci card:

# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF version 0.9.0-knoppix ---
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-cmipci
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
options snd major=116 cards_limit=1 device_gid=29 device_mode=0660
options snd-cmipci index=0
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---

I then copied this file to alsa-pcisound.conf

Although the file said not to edit it, I did it anyway .. I found this page that kind of explained what need to be done to get both cards working:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=MultipleCards

Here is my combined /etc/modutils/alsa-0.9-knoppix :
# Start

alias char-major-116 snd
alias char-major-14 soundcore
options snd major=116 cards_limit=2 device_gid=29 device_mode=0660

# Onboard Sound

alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

# Cmedia

alias sound-slot-1 snd-card-1
alias sound-service-1-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-1-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-1-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-1-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-1-12 snd-pcm-oss


#Set Card 1 (Onboard Sound)

alias snd-card-1 snd-intel8x0
options snd-intel8x0 index=0

#Set Card 0 (Cmedia Pci Sound Card)

alias snd-card-0 snd-cmipci
options snd-cmipci index=1

# End

Take note not to leave any additional files in /etc/modutils (ie the two .conf files I mentioned earlier for saving settings for each sound card) or they will be included in /etc/modules.conf when you do a 'update-modules'

Also, I had some troubles with the card numbering, but from my experience, Card 0 is the pci card and Card 1 is the onboard sound.

At this stage, you should be able to do a 'update-modules' and then 'modprobe snd-card-0' and 'modprobe snd-card-1' . A quick look at 'lsmod' should show both modules loaded in 'snd' .

At this point, you need to select the capture device (line in, mic, etc) for the newly added card. I used 'alsamixer -c 1' to choose the pci card (although it is snd-card-0 .. strange). Then use the arrow keys to move to the slider for the input you want to use (line in, mic, etc) and then press the space bar to set that as the capture device.

That SHOULD be it, but for some reason, the pci card was not being configured on boot, so I added a file called '/etc/init.d/loca'l that contains:

#! /bin/sh
modprobe snd-card-0
modprobe snd-card-1

Set the permissions on this file to match the others in the /etc/init.d directory.

At this point, I could boot and have the card ready for use. For some reason, I was unable to get the line-in working on my card. I went round-and-round with it before trying the mic-in input. It worked fine (I know it's mono). I think I might have a broken solder connection. I'll have to look at this this weekend.

Hope this helps someone. I think if this information would have been available to me, it would have made installing the second card a snap.