NAME

       osstest - Open Sound System audio self test applet.

DESCRIPTION

       The  osstest applet is a simple test application that can be used to test functionality of
       the sound hardware installed in the system.

       osstest performs a playback test for  each  installed  audio  device.  If  there  are  any
       "machine  detectable"  problems they will be reported. You will first hear an audio sample
       played on the left speaker, then the right speaker and finally in stereo on both speakers.

       It's user's responsibility to listen if the test sound is audible. If no sound output  can
       be heard the possible reason is one of the following:

       1.  An  error  was  reported  by osstest. In this case there will usually not be any sound
           output. The error needs to be fixed before running osstest again.

       2.  There is no headphones or speakers connected. Or the connection is not made correctly.

       3.  The mixer volume level is set to a too low value. By default  it  should  be  OK.  The
           mixer  level can be adjusted using the mixer, ossmix and ossxmix utilities distributed
           with OSS.

       4.  Some notebooks have nonstandard volume control and/or speaker selection hardware  that
           is  not  supported  by  OSS.  It's  very  likely  that OSS doesn't support such vendor
           specific additions.

       If no errors were reported and the test sound was audible it means that OSS and your sound
       hardware  is  functioning  correctly.  If  you  still  encounter  problems with some sound
       applications the reason is almost certainly in the application. Check  it's  configuration
       or try to use another equivivalent application.

       If you are having problems with JDS, KDE and/or Gnome system sounds, you need to make sure
       that OSS gets started before the GUI environment. Refer to your operating system's startup
       procedures.

   SAMPLE RATE DRIFT
       The  osstest utility measures a sample rate drift value after playing back the test sound.
       Ideally it should be 0% but in practice there will be an error of few percents.  0%  means
       that the 48000 Hz test file was played exactly at 48000 Hz sampling rate.

       The sample rate measurement is based on the system timer which has limited precision. It's
       likely that less than 1% differenc between the nominal and the measured sampling rates are
       actually  caused  by  an  error in the measurement.  For this reason the drift reported by
       osstest should not be used as any kind of quality measurement. However  if  the  drift  is
       very  large it means that there is something wrong in the system. The oscillator chip used
       with the sound chip is broken or the system clock is running at a wrong speed.

   USING OSSTEST MANUALLY
       The osstest utility is located in the /usr/bin directory. It can be run manually  to  test
       functionality  of  OSS  and  your  sound  hardware.  When invoked without any command line
       parameters osstest performs the default test on all devices. However it will skip some  of
       the devices base on the following rules.

       •  It  is possible to test just one of the available audio devices by giving its number on
          command line (for example osstest 1). Use the device index numbers reported by "ossinfo
          -a".

       •  Use the -l command line option to loop the test infinitely.

       •  Virtual  mixer devices will not be tested. Use the -V command line option to force test
          of virtual devices.

       •  The actual (physical) audio devices will be tested directly (bypassing virtual  mixer).
          If you want to test playback through vmix then use the -V option.

       •  Multiple  device  files  related with the same physical device will not be tested. Only
          the first one gets tested while the remaining ones will  be  skipped.  At  this  moment
          there is no way to force osstest to test this kind of devices.

       •  Only  stereo  devices  will  be tested. Future versions of osstest will be able to test
          mono and multi channel devices too. Also osstest requires that the device supports  the
          16 bit signed format and 48kHz sampling rate.

       •  Send a SIGQUIT (Ctrl-\ on most terminals) to make osstest skip a device.

FILES

       /usr/bin/osstest

SEE ALSO

       savemixer(1)

AUTHOR

       4Front Technologies

                                         03 December 2013                              osstest(1)