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Date:      Mon, 16 Mar 1998 20:20:15 GMT
From:      Michael Searle <searle+lon@longacre.demon.co.uk>
To:        freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: pcaudio volume
Message-ID:  <m27E31FAF@longacre.demon.co.uk>
References:  <350A5CCF.732@singapore.com> <19980315103557.24927@ct.picker.com> <v03110701b1328cc91f06@[165.21.161.136]> <19980316061420.40449@ct.picker.com>

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Randall Hopper <rhh@ct.picker.com> wrote:

> Richard Goh: |Randall Hopper: |>Goh: |> |controller snd0 |> |device pca0
> ...... |> | |> |When I cat an audio file to pcaudio, the volume is so
> low it is drowned |> |by the fan. |> |>Was a particular sound file
> you've played ever louder on the same machine |>with the same fan
> installed? | |It was never ever louder, had to put my ears near to the
> speakers to hear |the music (yamato.au, that's.au etc).  Tried it on two
> different PCs with |the same result.  I can hear the au files perfectly
> well on my Macintosh |so they are not corrupted or anything like that. |
> |Is there a way to set the volume or any documentation on this. I have
> |tried the handbook, faq and the archives without much luck.

> I'm going to hazard a guess there isn't.  

> As I recall from my old DOS days, the original PC audio hardware was
> really primitive.  It only had a single bit to twiddle for the speaker.
> 0 = move the cone in; 1 = move the cone out (or vice versa).  No control
> to vary the degree to which the cone is moved in and out.  The speaker
> was/is real tiny anyway, so low frequencies didn't fare well.

> So you could generate simple tones by adjusting the rate you twiddled
> this bit, but generating complex harmony or reproducing recorded files
> was not done originally.  [I still remember the first game out there
> that did the latter (MeanStreets) to play prerecorded files and how cool
> that was at the time.]

> 'course, this anemic original design was one of the reason for the
> success of the original Sound Blasters.

I don't think it's quite that simple. There's 3 different ways to produce
different bleeps, which can be used separately or in combination. You still
can't get anything more than a bleep though. YMMV though as this is from an
Amstrad PC-semicompatible - this may be a Feature.


-- 
Michael Searle - csubl@csv.warwick.ac.uk

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