USB Mixers/soundcards

[Brian Chabot]

Brian Chabot wrote:

>Numark DM950USB DJ Mixer - About $79 plus $15 shipping on eBay - doesn't
>come with anything but cables.
>  
>

Well... I dropped the $100 and got one of these.

In Mandriva Linux 2006 with all the latest patches, the
DM950USB was auto detected and the drivers (kernel modules) loaded
without ANY user intervention.  I simply ran XMMS, configured it (like
WinAmp) to allow multiple instances, then told this one to use one "USB
Audio" device and ran XMMS a second time and told it to use the other one.

It not only works, but it works FLAWLESSLY. 

I emailed the company and suggested changing their  marketing materials to include
something like:

"The DM 950 USB has been found to work well with current versions of
Linux using the snd-usb-audio kernel module, but the Linux OS is
unsupported at this time."

Getting it to work is a LOT like in Windows... but *easier*.

In Mandriva 2006:

1. Install XMMS, OSS, and update the system using urpmi or DrakConf.
2. Open xmms and in the options (options -> Preferences -> Options tab)
make sure "Allow Multipls Instances" is checked.
3. Exit xmms to save changed to the config file.
4. Plug in your DM 950 USB and connect it to the Linux computer.
5. Start the first instance of xmms.
6. In Options -> Preferences -> Audio I/O Plugins click on the Configure
button.
7. Select the FIRST instance of "USB Audio" for the output device and
the mixer.
8. Click OK to return to the Preferences and OK again to return to xmms.
9. Start the second instance of xmms and repeat steps 6-8 but selecting
the *second* USB Audio device listed.
10. Play files in each xmms window to determine which channel in the
mixer they go to.

That's it.

Hope this helps someone some day...

Brian