2015 — 5 December: Saturday
Today may or may not be the day the teddy bears have their picnic, but it's the day my little Xonar external USB soundcard (and headphone amplifier) should finally arrive. I've bought this latest little toy since no-one has been able to prevent, or diagnose the underlying reason for, the occasional 'disappearance' of my Creative X-Fi PCI soundcard.1 I don't like my PC audio unpredictably coming — via the graphics card — out of the tinny speakers built into my Dell screen. I much prefer it to wash over me from the hi-fi at the other end of the room.
When the X-Fi card is present and correct, it works well. I will keep it in the PC as it may yet have a rôle to play in digitising my minidiscs and cassettes. (That's so going to happen, one day...)
To see if I'm awake...
... my Firefox web browser decided to put its window on the (not yet switched on) Kuro plasma screen.2 I'm sure there's a keyboard short-cut to grab the thing and wrangle it back on to the Dell. But until I learn that trick from Len, all I can do now is:
- switch on the Oppo,
- switch on the Kuro,
- count to ten,
- select "Back HDMI" as the Oppo's input,
- wait for all the hideous HDCP Masonic handshaking, and
- finally grab the browser window with my mouse...
... just to get my web browser window on the Dell screen. Tell me again about all this wondrous convergence of TV and PC in the living room. Computers, heh?
God knows where it will now go if I switch off the Kuro again, of course. With Firefox safely out of its Black Hole, I set the Oppo back to being a Blu-ray player. Firefox didn't so much as twitch. Switched off the Kuro. Still no twitch. Switched off the Oppo. Still no twitch. Phew!
"I can see this is a relationship we're all going to have to work on."
For future ref...
The Alt + F7 combination puts a window into move mode, after which you can move it with mouse or keyboard, so it should be possible to put the focus on Firefox with Alt-Tab then move it left until it shows up. Excellent.
After inaudible mis-adventures...
... too numerous etc. etc. I once again have glorious digital audio wending its weary way from BlackBeast to the A/V system across the carpet. But no thanks to the dinky little Xonar, which is as stubbornly mute as my earlier Creative Audigy Soundblaster external USB soundcard. Neither is prepared to make so much as a beep, digitally, under Linux. The Xonar delivers perfectly good analogue audio — if you're willing to stretch the meaning of "perfectly good" to encompass sound levels that are 30dB below any of my other analogue, or digital, sources. Frankly, I'm unwilling. And that's even when I'm running things at just over 150% 'above' the 0dB midpoint of the adjustable range.
Yes, I tried both headphones and RCA outputs.
Yes, I wound up the wick on every bit of Linux volume control I could find.
Yes, I ran alsamixer, which sees the Xonar but complains about a "broken pipe" when I select it. (This last might be a clue, of course.)
I shall await Brian's return from bracing Skegness for further advice (though from his emails I see he's never actually tried digital audio out of his Xonar). So, once again, I'm using what I'm starting to think of as "my good old reliable" X-Fi. Its cheery red LED light does the business at the other end. That's all I ask, really.
I shall move up...
... to the new Linux Mint 17.3 in the next couple of weeks. Here's one reason: "Many multi-monitor related issues were also fixed, in particular to make sure applications and windows were launched on the active monitor..."! Actually, the Release Notes promise a heartening number of goodies.
My lady caller...
... with the Indian accent — on being told politely "But I don't run Windows on my computers, madam" — hung up abruptly. Why was that, I wonder?
Gloomily contemplating...
... a classic trio:
- my oft-proved total failure to inherit Dad's "bump of direction",
- tomorrow's destination, and
- my half-aunt's caution that her postal code "only gets you somewhere near the bottom of our drive"...
... I have to ask "What could possibly go wrong?" Or "Why do my relatives insist on burying themselves away?"
I expect...
... you can probably guess which idiot managed to make a one-character typo in that single line of a config file and thus "broke" his "pipe"?
Analogue stereo audio is now coming through nice and clear from the Xonar. I still have no clue how — if at all — its digital side can be persuaded to join the audio party, but that's enough progress for the time being. [Pause] Hah! It's not just me. There's apparently a bug out against the Xonar's SP/DIF output not being recognised by pulseaudio. Though fixing attempts seem to have timed out.
(Mind you, I have to admit the quality of the analogue output is pretty damn' fine.)