Alsa: HELP!!!

IvanHoe · l33t Joined: 05 Oct 2002 Posts: 658

I installed Alsa following the Gentoo documentation and everything seems to work: aplay tells me it's playing xxxx.wav, the mixer in Gnome works properly, the sound recorder seems to work properly and I get no errors at all. Unfortunately, I hear nothing (yes the master and pcm are set to 100% and unmuted... and I'm not deaf :wink:

). Any suggestions?

rbonthond · Apprentice Joined: 24 Jun 2002 Posts: 190

can you give some more information about your system ? eg what soundcard etc ?

i had a problem with my onboard soundcard, and need to clear /etc/asound.state at boot to get sound working...

IvanHoe · l33t Joined: 05 Oct 2002 Posts: 658

Doh! It's a Sony PCG-F540 notebook that uses Yamaha DS-XG sound. The Alsa driver is ymfpci. Here's what my /etc/modules.d/alsa file looks like:

rbonthond · Apprentice Joined: 24 Jun 2002 Posts: 190

hmm... seems oke... oke, couple of guesses

you did configure /etc/devfsd.conf ?
all modules are loaded ? (check with lsmod)
nothing in /var/log/* ?
are you sure the sound plug is oke ? (try a headphone or something)
did you also turn on sound in KDE (if you are using that) ?

well, let me know what gives.

rbonthond · Apprentice Joined: 24 Jun 2002 Posts: 190

perphaps this also helps:

http://linux-sxs.org/yamdsg.html

also this reports not use alsa at-all, but plain kernel stuff:

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~olenik/vaioF-540.html

this guy tells to turn of PnP in the BIOS to get sound working:

http://www.ulfheim.net/f540.html

IvanHoe · l33t Joined: 05 Oct 2002 Posts: 658

Thanks for the tips. Kernel sound seems to work fine so I'll just go with that.

Ian Goldby · Posted: Sun Dec 08, 2002 9:53 pm Post subject:

You may like to know that I had problems getting sound output after configuring ALSA. Everything appeared to work, sound files played and took the right length of time to play, but no sound - just as if the cable to the speakers wasn't plugged in (but it was).

Turned out all that was wrong was that the mixer control 'Master', which I had set as per instructions, had no effect, but I should have used the control 'Headphone', which the guide didn't mention. Funny hardware... I actually got into double trouble - I thought I'd tried setting all the volume controls to maximum, but I'd missed to unmute the headphones output. alsamixer is quite useful. Use the cursor keys and M to unmute. Don't believe all the labels though - try everything!

iplayfast · Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2002 6:43 pm Post subject:

I'm using the ymfpci driver, and when it's booting it says initializing Alsa (or something to that effect) and I hear the speakers make a small pop (which sounds like volume levels being set).

However once the system is up, I can't get any sound. I've tried the mixers and set everything I could find to full blast, but nary a peep comes out.

Anyone have any clues as to what I could do to figure out the errors of my ways?

vibidoo · Guru Joined: 27 Nov 2002 Posts: 409

if you had tried everything who is in yhe ALSA guide

just try this

iplayfast · Posted: Mon Dec 30, 2002 3:26 pm Post subject:

I've got ALSA working! My problem was that I had a sound blaster, and an onboard sound system. I wanted to use the onboard system, but for some unknown reason the soundblaster kept being put as card #1. Finally I just removed any reference to a second sound card and say I only had my onboard sound system. Then it worked! (clear as a bell too!)

From there it's on to festival and other great fun!

eNTi · Posted: Mon Dec 30, 2002 7:51 pm Post subject:

my guess ist to try setting all levers in alsamixer to 100 and unmute all channels. you might want to do this lever by lever to check out, which one works for your soundcard as master. i have a sblive and wether pcm nor master does anything to my output. (neither muted nor umuted)
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santo · n00b Joined: 24 Apr 2002 Posts: 44 Location: Belgium

I can't get my "system bell" to work, everything else seems to work. (as far as I tried other stuff)
In each case, the sounds at login and logout of KDE are working just fine.

I already set every component amixer knows of (see listing below) to 100% and unmute, but nothing seems to help.

root # amixer scontrols
Simple mixer control 'Master',0
Simple mixer control 'Master Mono',0
Simple mixer control '3D Control - Switch',0
Simple mixer control '3D Control Sigmatel - Depth',0
Simple mixer control 'PCM',0
Simple mixer control 'Line',0
Simple mixer control 'CD',0
Simple mixer control 'Mic',0
Simple mixer control 'Mic Boost (+20dB)',0
Simple mixer control 'Mic Select',0
Simple mixer control 'Video',0
Simple mixer control 'Phone',0
Simple mixer control 'PC Speaker',0
Simple mixer control 'Aux',0
Simple mixer control 'Mono Output Select',0
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
Simple mixer control 'Mix',0
Simple mixer control 'Mix Mono',0
Simple mixer control 'External Amplifier Power Down',0