We’re not doing this. People in the Linux community are so tweaked by years of bad support that they assume every complaint is a call for help.
It is not.
I know what’s broken, I know why, I know it’s not easily fixable, I have a workaround. This is not a tech support thread.
I don’t need information from users more savvy than me, I need the bad sound firmware they’re loading in lieu of specific support for my audio card to be fixed, or even better, replaced by actual specifically supported firmware so my card works. In the meantime, crappy on-board audio and wasting money on hardware I’m not using it is.
That’s fair, and I don’t have a problem with that. I’m just annoyed by the tendency of the community to react to criticism with technical advice, which I find to be a frustrating crutch.
FWIW, the card is a Sound Blaster X AE5 (that name sure has aged poorly), and I’ve had similar issues with it in both a Manjaro and a Bazzite install.
IMO that reaction is healthy, as long as it isn’t a hostile “you’re holding it wrong” (which was not my intent, and is very much a community problem). Communal troubleshooting is the nature of the Linux desktop.
If you don’t want advice, that’s fine, probably reasonable based on what you described. But I have had some similar (but not so severe) issues with Fioo and Xonar cards that got fixed with some low level configs I had no idea existed.
And maybe I could get to some more in-depth solution that sorts it out, but that’s me spending time on a problem that a) I shouldn’t have to, and b) I have a functional workaround for already.
Communal troubleshooting is the nature of Linux desktop, but also a massive problem. You shouldn’t need communal troubleshooting in the first place. It’s not a stand-in for proper UX, hardware compatibility or reliable implementation. If the goal is for more people to migrate to Linux the community needs to get over the assumption that troubleshooting is a valid answer to these types of issues.
Which is not to say the community shouldn’t be helpful, but there’s this tendency to aggressively troubleshoot at people complaining about issues and limitations and then to snark at people actively asking for help troubleshooting for not reading documentation or not providing thorough enough logs and information. I find that obnoxious, admittedly because it’s been decades, so I may be on a hair trigger for it at this point.
If it helps for a future purchase, Focusrite’s external interfaces have been amazing for Linux support.
To the point where I didn’t even notice; It just worked perfectly out of the box.
I’m assuming you’ve already checked this, but is your interface set to the same frequency/bit depth between Linux and windows? Or if it uses optical, whether it’s set to the same word clock source.
I tried fiddling with the Windows settings, but that didn’t fix it immediately, and the sound is clearly wrong on Linux even with a power cycle. And googling for it I’m not alone in having issues and support for the thing is patchy. I mean, rebooting should have fixed it anyway. There’s no reason why either OS wouldn’t initialize those things on boot.
I am not particularly commited to the thing, so I wouldn’t buy an upgrade. The only reason I have it is at some point I ended up with a motherboard that wouldn’t do 5.1 out of the box, so I got something relatively affordable to slap in there. It sounds noticeably better than integrated audio, though, so now that I have it I’d like to use it, even if I’m not on the problematic old motherboard.
But again, I dislike the tendency to recommend functional hardware or technical support. It’s kinda frustrating. And frankly, it works on Windows, so if I was looking for a fix, that’s right there. The onus is on Linux for support in this type of setup where the issue is not on the Windows side that’s a reboot away.
We’re not doing this. People in the Linux community are so tweaked by years of bad support that they assume every complaint is a call for help.
It is not.
I know what’s broken, I know why, I know it’s not easily fixable, I have a workaround. This is not a tech support thread.
I don’t need information from users more savvy than me, I need the bad sound firmware they’re loading in lieu of specific support for my audio card to be fixed, or even better, replaced by actual specifically supported firmware so my card works. In the meantime, crappy on-board audio and wasting money on hardware I’m not using it is.
I was kind curious too, even if I can’t fix it. But… okay.
That’s fair, and I don’t have a problem with that. I’m just annoyed by the tendency of the community to react to criticism with technical advice, which I find to be a frustrating crutch.
FWIW, the card is a Sound Blaster X AE5 (that name sure has aged poorly), and I’ve had similar issues with it in both a Manjaro and a Bazzite install.
IMO that reaction is healthy, as long as it isn’t a hostile “you’re holding it wrong” (which was not my intent, and is very much a community problem). Communal troubleshooting is the nature of the Linux desktop.
If you don’t want advice, that’s fine, probably reasonable based on what you described. But I have had some similar (but not so severe) issues with Fioo and Xonar cards that got fixed with some low level configs I had no idea existed.
And maybe I could get to some more in-depth solution that sorts it out, but that’s me spending time on a problem that a) I shouldn’t have to, and b) I have a functional workaround for already.
Communal troubleshooting is the nature of Linux desktop, but also a massive problem. You shouldn’t need communal troubleshooting in the first place. It’s not a stand-in for proper UX, hardware compatibility or reliable implementation. If the goal is for more people to migrate to Linux the community needs to get over the assumption that troubleshooting is a valid answer to these types of issues.
Which is not to say the community shouldn’t be helpful, but there’s this tendency to aggressively troubleshoot at people complaining about issues and limitations and then to snark at people actively asking for help troubleshooting for not reading documentation or not providing thorough enough logs and information. I find that obnoxious, admittedly because it’s been decades, so I may be on a hair trigger for it at this point.
If it helps for a future purchase, Focusrite’s external interfaces have been amazing for Linux support.
To the point where I didn’t even notice; It just worked perfectly out of the box.
I’m assuming you’ve already checked this, but is your interface set to the same frequency/bit depth between Linux and windows? Or if it uses optical, whether it’s set to the same word clock source.
I tried fiddling with the Windows settings, but that didn’t fix it immediately, and the sound is clearly wrong on Linux even with a power cycle. And googling for it I’m not alone in having issues and support for the thing is patchy. I mean, rebooting should have fixed it anyway. There’s no reason why either OS wouldn’t initialize those things on boot.
I am not particularly commited to the thing, so I wouldn’t buy an upgrade. The only reason I have it is at some point I ended up with a motherboard that wouldn’t do 5.1 out of the box, so I got something relatively affordable to slap in there. It sounds noticeably better than integrated audio, though, so now that I have it I’d like to use it, even if I’m not on the problematic old motherboard.
But again, I dislike the tendency to recommend functional hardware or technical support. It’s kinda frustrating. And frankly, it works on Windows, so if I was looking for a fix, that’s right there. The onus is on Linux for support in this type of setup where the issue is not on the Windows side that’s a reboot away.