Support for Sound Blaster devices for Sun Fire V440?

[JLJsdl]

Hi there,

I'm looking for a sound card solution for the Sun Fire V440 (Sparc 64) running Solaris 10 (06/06 release) in JDS3.

I've been looking through the supported device list to find a PCI card or external USB device that would do.

I've got some questions:

• Sound Blaster X-fi
  This newer crop of cards isn't in the supported devices list for OSS. Will they be supported in the near-future?
  
• Creative Audigy SE
  This doesn't seem to be supported either. Am I mistaken?
  The reason I'm interested in this one is that it appears to be commercially available.
  
• Creative Audigy2 NX USB
  This is listed as (BETA). Any idea when this one will no longer be in beta testing? How well does the beta version work now? This also appears to be commercially available.
  
• Creative Audigy2 & Audigy4
  These are listed as supported, but don't appear to be widely available ... I assume because they are older cards. I can find a few listings on Ebay for these, but I need to reliably be able to procure a bunch of them.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[dev]

Hi there,

I'm looking for a sound card solution for the Sun Fire V440 (Sparc 64) running Solaris 10 (06/06 release) in JDS3.

I've been looking through the supported device list to find a PCI card or external USB device that would do.

I've got some questions:

• Sound Blaster X-fi
  This newer crop of cards isn't in the supported devices list for OSS. Will they be supported in the near-future?
  
• Creative Audigy SE
  This doesn't seem to be supported either. Am I mistaken?
  The reason I'm interested in this one is that it appears to be commercially available.
  
• Creative Audigy2 NX USB
  This is listed as (BETA). Any idea when this one will no longer be in beta testing? How well does the beta version work now? This also appears to be commercially available.
  
• Creative Audigy2 & Audigy4
  These are listed as supported, but don't appear to be widely available ... I assume because they are older cards. I can find a few listings on Ebay for these, but I need to reliably be able to procure a bunch of them.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Only the Audigy2 Audigy4 and the Creative Audigy SE will work on Solaris Sparc. USB will work but isn't recommended for performance reasons.


best regards
Dev Mazumdar

[JLJsdl]

Only the Audigy2 Audigy4 and the Creative Audigy SE will work on Solaris Sparc. USB will work but isn't recommended for performance reasons.


best regards
Dev Mazumdar

Thanks! That's good news about Audigy SE, since that is available in stores. I wasn't sure because it wasn't in the list of supported devices.

When you say that USB performance isn't good, do you mean for high-end uses, such as intense gamers? I simply need reasonable sound for computer-based training applications, perhaps using Flash Player. I don't need high-end performance for games.

Would USB be sufficient for this case, or would it really be insufficient anyway and degrade general performance on the machine for some reason? Each of our Sun Fire V440s has 4 CPUs and 16GB memory.

My boss has pointed me to the Sun website that lists some other USB sound devices that can be used on Solaris 10, such as:

• Creative Labs USB Sound Blaster MP3+
• iMic USB Audio Interface

This is not my field of expertise, so I don't know if these will perform well on Solaris 10 Sparc. The reason I persist in asking about USB devices is that this is the direction my boss is pushing for, although it's not set in stone.

[dev]

Only the Audigy2 Audigy4 and the Creative Audigy SE will work on Solaris Sparc. USB will work but isn't recommended for performance reasons.


best regards
Dev Mazumdar

Thanks! That's good news about Audigy SE, since that is available in stores. I wasn't sure because it wasn't in the list of supported devices.

When you say that USB performance isn't good, do you mean for high-end uses, such as intense gamers? I simply need reasonable sound for computer-based training applications, perhaps using Flash Player. I don't need high-end performance for games.

Would USB be sufficient for this case, or would it really be insufficient anyway and degrade general performance on the machine for some reason? Each of our Sun Fire V440s has 4 CPUs and 16GB memory.

My boss has pointed me to the Sun website that lists some other USB sound devices that can be used on Solaris 10, such as:

• Creative Labs USB Sound Blaster MP3+
• iMic USB Audio Interface

This is not my field of expertise, so I don't know if these will perform well on Solaris 10 Sparc. The reason I persist in asking about USB devices is that this is the direction my boss is pushing for, although it's not set in stone.

The Audigy2 SE is listed as: Sound Blaster Audigy LS / Live7.1 - it's a different marketing name for the same device.

The reason I want to steer you away from USB under Sparc is because there are issues with the USB driver and we're hoping to get them resolved shortly (x86 version seems to be ok).


regards
Dev Mazumdar

[JLJsdl]

I see. Thanks!