Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX in Linux

Recently I had been looking for a solution to the "my sound on the laptop sucks and has no rear channel or any other way to create a cue for mixing" problem, and I stumbled across the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX, a USB 2.0 capable audio device with impressive enough specs--certainly beating the laptop's onboard audio and having digital input and output, making it able to connect to other equipment.

So... how does it rank up in Linux? Depends on the driver you use. OSS and ALSA both have drivers capable of operating the card. Neither works in USB 2.0 mode--it seems the Windows driver has to enable this for it to work, and when enabled the Linux drivers both produce horrible, choppy sound. Resetting the device (causing it to reappear as USB 1.1) solves this problem.

I have been unable to record with the OSS driver, nor use multichannel output. Neither can I set up the mixer correctly. I cannot recommend the OSS driver for this card, although it is possible to use if ALSA sets up the mixer first.

I've had awesome success both recording and playing with ALSA. The mixer is strange, though. 'Headphone playback source' has to be changed from... 'Mixer'... to... 'Mixer'... (press down arrow in alsamixer on this channel and the headphone output starts working). The 'Headphone' channel is a toggle that can mute the headphones if needed. The first 'Speaker 2' channel controls volume for both the front speakers and the headphones. Both it and PCM can be maxed out on this setup without distortion. I have not used multichannel yet, so I can't tell which sliders relate to what in that setup yet.

Also, the card is really badly behaved at 44.1kHz. I have xmms-crossfade set up to resample to 48kHz with the highest quality resampler it supports. For command line use, I use sox's resample effect. This was slightly inconvenient, but not a problem as I had already done similar on my desktop for the SPDIF out that runs at 48kHz only.

Oh, well. With the right setup, the Audigy 2 NX can be a nice card in Linux. My only really big wish is that it could use USB 2.0 from Linux, but it's really not a big deal, as I doubt I'll need 96kHz multichannel audio in the near future. It would also be nice if 44.1kHz playback worked in Linux, but it seems many of Creative Labs' cards internally resample 44.1kHz to 48kHz anyway. Might as well let the more powerful CPU have a crack at it and hope for a better sounding result!