HDMI audo stopped working after update [SOLVED]

[Efo]

Hi all,

Looks like I am having a busy weekend after switching to profile 17. It looks like my audio through HDMI stopped working, and I am not sure why.

I am using pulseaudio with ALSA (udev and ConsoleKit)

Some info:

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

Hey Efo - The good news, I think your issue is a fairly common, from the perspective of a card/device being read by the software or linux userspace and having to pass along that information to hardware that is well outside the scope of most pieces of software, without a middle man like the kernel to come to help. Although there could be a very good explanation from a pulseaudio standpoint, I wonder if you could briefly just check and see if ALSA is working using some of the following.... and the reason I mention it in this order is pulseaudio works "on top" of ALSA and requires ALSA to be running for it to work together. Hence, I wouldn't guess that this is anything to do with pulseaudio, but probably has to do with the backend of ALSA that really controls the cards or devices much more complete than pulseaudio does but without any of the fun GUI and pictures of little speakers and stuff.

Linux audio processing is very complex, so the best I can do is offer a couple suggestions. First, in terms of why it is that 1 HDMI connection can look like 2, you might just think of it the same way as a 7 speaker surround sound (usually 7.1 or 7 something) is actually 7 different outputs and must be treated as such (since each gets something a bit different). Anyway, I don't know really enough, so I won't go any further with that part of it.

But in terms of what you might try in order to get the sound working (at least on some level), meaning that you can later see if you need better instructions to improve the features for your various purposes you are using this PC for, but here's what you can do to get your audio working again quickly.

ALSA Config

Start by checking the speaker ability to receive and play audio, using the aplay tool, which is part of alsa-utils package

In order to do this (while testing the speakers essentially) what you will have to do is tell aplay, which has the ability to bypass the alsa configuration from arguments passed to in the CLI...isn't that cool!!

So while a device might exist like Card=PCH, Device=2 and another one Card=PCH, Device=3, if the simplest or least involved way for sound is through Device 3 for the basic 1 or 2 channel sound (I think).

Therefore, you have to test each and see which one is actually carrying the signal to the speaker, and then set that one as the card and device.

Does that make sense?

Check out here too about half way down (I posted about using aplay but also mplayer to test the speakers there)
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1072654-highlight-.html


The valuable lesson from an audio standpoint to see is that whether it is pulseaudio or alsa, but really for alsa specifically that just because things can look totally messed up, it doesn't mean they are actually screwed.

So you can check to see if you have sound from that output, and then copy the info into a config file which is either going to be /etc/asound.conf for a system wide file, or your ~/.asoundrc for the user specific one.

Here's how to use aplay -D, I think but you may need to go online and check for the exact format. By the way, aplay has the ability to test many different devices which is nice if you want to try different ways of configuring alsa, there's even often more than 1 way to access the same sound card so have a go.

I think you will have to replace the information below with either 0,3 or 0,7 when using it.

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

Also see here, if it is about getting alsa configured
https://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Asoundrc#The_default_plugin

[Efo]

Hi LIsLinuxIsSogood and thank you for the replies,

I followed a bunch of threads including the one you mentioned. Among other things I found that CONFIG_SND_VERBOSE_PROCFS was set; however, unsetting it didnt help.

I also

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

hi Efo ,i forgot to mention this but you can go into alsamixer to get a better description of what matters. The reason the test you did was no good is it tests the speakers (not hdmi audio) and it required probably a different specification for audio channels count something i forgot to mention

If you want to speakertest these then add -c 2 to your command to tell aplay what to do in terms of channel output or it will not know on its own what to do with it. The test you need to do to make sure that hdmi device works, so alsamixer is not really helpful in testing these devices but it does help show if those controls it uses are there then thats a good sign When doing the speaker test with aplay try to make use of the channels that may be different and set that in the command like this aplay -D (your device here) -c ( 1 or 2 or more whatever the card supports) wavfile.wav
Say you have to do a bunch of times (like maybe even 5 or 6 or more times to try different combos of devices, channels and possibly more) it is my belief this will actually save time for what it is worth.

Heres a helpful description from a different distro that explains bit better about the sound problems or potential for them.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture/Troubleshooting#HDMI


Hey i just noticed that you are on a machine which shows integrated hdmi so i think you should after looking at the link then go back and emter

aplay -Dhw:0,3
aplay -Dhw:0,7

each time passing -c 1 and then repeat by passing -c 2, to tell aplay how work with the speAker channels.
In theory you should be able to test the ability gor audio to produce sound in alsa then configure alsa but still ask for pulseaudio to smoothly manage the respurces on a per application or per stream way

Are you alright with that?

[trikmik]

Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel

check the kernel module for your hardware audio device
what is your output of:
# lspci
search for snd hda in the kernel

[Efo]

LIsLinuxIsSogood:

I followed the link and I did

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

[Efo]

Ok, that's embarassing. It turns out it was muted :oops:

I didnt notice it because it showed

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

Good news! This is also why I dislike pulseaudio, because it adds unnecessary pictures into the mix so that it looks like it works when it doesn't

Glad to help. Mute switch may seem like nothing, but it is something. And you got your answer from asking. Now maybe time to read up on the ALSA codecs and see how the sinks/sources work so you can further configure the asound file for your system. Or you can be the and try without the configuration for now.

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

Now that you have ALSA working plain and simple, if you don't plan to complicate things much further in terms of the audio hardware on your device, then I think what you need is a basic configuration for ALSA that "syncs" or locks together the PA channels with a working ALSA sink.

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

[Efo]

All works after a reboot, I dont have /etc/asound.conf.

Thanks for the help, I brushed up some ALSA skills and I relearned to always to double check mute buttons whether they are in alsamixer or pavucontrol :)