The Creative Soundblaster 5.1vx on Linux: Update #1

Ok, so the capture works perfectly. You need to tell jack to ignore xruns, however, in case you have a slow system and you get too many and it gets stuck into an endless loop.

You might start jack like this:

jackd -d alsa -r 48000 -s

How to make the Creative SoundBlaster 5.1vx sound card work on Linux

If you have ever tried this card on Linux, you must have encountered the "white noise" problem, which is that you can only hear white noise if you try to play any sound. You must have spent endless hours like me trying to make it work, but probably you couldn't. That's why you're still searching. Well, search no more.

You'll want to kiss me after you read this - it's really that simple.

First of all, get the latest kernel version from kernel.org. I'm using 2.6.38.4, and the performance boost is awesome! It's my favorite version yet!

Now, this is important - alongside the ALSA modules, build the old OSS system as a module, and specifically build the old "100% sound blaster compatible" driver as a module too. Build the kernel and reboot, and viola! It works!

Logic: I __think__ the old "sb" oss driver installs some sort of firmware or something that the card needs. But it works fine with the native snd-ca0106 alsa module - the oss module just sits there. But this system makes it work flawlessly.

I'm gonna report it back to the alsa developers so that they can perhaps have a better look at it.

Enjoy!