change sound device order - pass kernel options at boot?

hunky · l33t Joined: 19 Nov 2003 Posts: 909 Location: Alaska

I've got a non systemD system, using efi to boot on my desktop (I think is ASUS motherboard).

I'm having a sound issue and was thinking if I could remap the order of cards, it may help solve some things. Right now, card 0 is HDMI, which I don't think I use. Card 1 is PCH, which I do use. The Scarlett on occasion, but can choose cards from within audacity or other interface for that use.

LIsLinuxIsSogood · Veteran Joined: 13 Feb 2016 Posts: 1179

hunky, what is the issue you are having with the sound? You may be able to introduce some kernel arguments like you said, but then that could have its own unintended consequences. ALSA is pretty reliable at managing the cards in the locations they are given by default. Are you sure that you haven't just misconfigured something else. Have you also changed your default card, you can do this by following the important instructions in the ALSA wiki page and go to ~/.asounrc and insert the name of the default card. See here...
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ALSA#Configuration

Hopefully that gets you started or else uncover some other information like what applications are not working properly with audio, and also are you using pulseaudio on top of ALSA?

hunky · l33t Joined: 19 Nov 2003 Posts: 909 Location: Alaska

Thanks for the reply LILIS!

You are probably right.. I was thinking of the kernel parameters because I haven't fully understood the ALSA instructions in that wiki.

I'm using -pulseaudio USE. And unstable. In the first of this month I traveled, so shut down the computer. When I came back, I had no sound, except in a couple apps like audacity - where I could choose the card. I didn't remember a recent update, but something like that probably got me. I have firefox 64, which did have sound (youtubes, vimeo, etc) before the reboot, and Chrome, which also worked fine before. So with no sound, I started investigating and see that without pulseaudio, firefox shouldn't have been working despite the fact it was.
Started playing around with my ~/.asoundrc as I read I think in the wiki:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2019 7:31 pm Post subject:

hunky,

The parameter index=1,0 has to be passed to snd-hda-intel when it is loaded for this method to work.

There are three cases to consider.
snd-hda-intel is built into the kernel binary. Pass snd-hda-intel.index=1,0 as a kernel parameter.
snd-hda-intel is loaded as a module, after the root filesystem is mounted. Pass index=1,0 according to your init system.
I use /etc/conf.d/modules
snd-hda-intel is loaded as a module in the initrd. Pass the parameter to snd-hda-intel in the initrd somehow.
_________________
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NeddySeagoon

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those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

mike155 · Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2019 7:40 pm Post subject:

hunky · l33t Joined: 19 Nov 2003 Posts: 909 Location: Alaska

Thanks for the replies! You've given me some meat to chew on.. will take awhile to digest.

LIsLinuxIsSogood · Veteran Joined: 13 Feb 2016 Posts: 1179

Just another thought to interject if you have no personal disagreement with the idea of installing it I think that if you did install pulseaudio, and run that on top of a working ALSA configuration it might perform better with the browsers on your system. That is since web browsers like Firefox and Chrome et al tend to be pretty complicated/comprehensive software programs. This does not mean it WONT work with ALSA instead of pulseaudio, but it might just work out of the box better with them both...no guarantees of course.

Good luck!

hunky · l33t Joined: 19 Nov 2003 Posts: 909 Location: Alaska

Thanks for replies.

Pulseaudio: I had it installed several years ago and for a reason I don't really remember decided to ditch it. Could be from trying to get it to work while also using Jack - I like to use Ardour (multi-track editor) on occasion. However, after Jack went through some updates some years ago, I haven't been able to get that going again. Made one valiant attempt and got confused by all the old info out there and the couple different jacks out there. Maybe it has all settled down now - haven't looked recently.

Mike155 gave a link to an Alsa site I've been working through. A bit aggravating since it refers to kernel versions around 2.6 - so it too is old stuff. Not sure that matters.. but it does say to build everything as a module rather than into the kernel as I have presently.. haven't tried doing that yet. In the troubleshooting section of that (I think) there was some aplay examples to get wav files to play. I couldn't get that working until I finally changed my .asoundrc . Currently it is this (with the 2 old configs commented out):