Headphones Yes / Notebook Speakers No

[67comet]

Seems I did something a few days ago, but haven't a clue what it was.

My earphones work great on my notebook (HP dv4000) but the internal laptop speakers don't work anymore.

I've ran alsaconf with no help (it actually didn't do anything, couldn't find much etc) ...
I've checked alsamixer with no help and nothing is muted and all volumes are most of the way up.

I checked my kernel and nothing changed there.

Help?

Thanks,
Justin

P.S. I also fired up in "that other OS" and it works as advertised.

[GetCool]

Hi,

I've been in this same boat quite a few times, where something audio-related works just fine in the "other OS" but not in Linux.

Since you mention that none of your channels are muted, it sounds to me like the output just isn't being directed to the right place. Please post the contents of /etc/asound.conf, if it exists. If it doesn't exist, we may need to create one to get it working.

Also, it might help to have some info about your hardware. Post the output of the following command as well:

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# aplay -l

By the way, don't run alsaconf. It won't do much unless you have your ALSA components built as modules (and I would recommend not building anything ALSA-related as a module).

[67comet]

Here is my aplay -l:

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lappy justin # aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: ICH6 [Intel ICH6], device 0: Intel ICH [Intel ICH6]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: ICH6 [Intel ICH6], device 4: Intel ICH - IEC958 [Intel ICH6 - IEC958]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Modem [Intel ICH6 Modem], device 0: Intel ICH - Modem [Intel ICH6 Modem - Modem]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

And it doesn't appear that there is an /etc/asound.conf. How can I go about rebuilding that bugger? (I'm assuming it existed at one time since it worked until I did who knows what).

Thank you,
Justin

*edit* .. My alsa stuff is compiled along with my kernel .. Not emerged .. */edit*

[67comet]

Any ideas? It's still not playing nice on it's internal speakers. It plays fine on it's headphone jack however.

Justin

[idella4]

67comet,

I am in a similar boat at the moment, just a little further along.

The /etc/asound.conf is not a standard file, but one that can be used to do the job.
In other words the alsa script 'looks' in a couple of places for config files, and that's one.
The settings will be currently coming from /etc/modules.conf and /etc/modules.d/alsa.

alsaconf should achieve a bit more than nothing, otherwise that implies something out of place at a more fundamental level.

Have you read through the alsa guide in the gentoo docs?

[GetCool]

Any ideas? It's still not playing nice on it's internal speakers. It plays fine on it's headphone jack however.

Hi,

Sorry I haven't followed up on my initial response.

If you look at your output of the "aplay -l" command, you can see a list of all the devices that ALSA recognizes. The nomenclature for identifying one of these devices is hw:X,Y, where X is the card number, and Y is the device number. As such, from your output, it looks like you have three devices:

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card 0: ICH6 [Intel ICH6], device 0: Intel ICH [Intel ICH6]
card 0: ICH6 [Intel ICH6], device 4: Intel ICH - IEC958 [Intel ICH6 - IEC958]
card 1: Modem [Intel ICH6 Modem], device 0: Intel ICH - Modem [Intel ICH6 Modem - Modem]

...with the ALSA identifiers hw:0,0, hw:0,4, and hw:1,0, respectively.

ALSA playback automatically uses hw:0,0 by default, and hw:1,0 is a modem, which you don't care about in this context. That leaves hw:0,4, which could possibly be the device identifier of the laptop speakers.

So, what you can do to find out is create an /etc/asound.conf file with the following contents:

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pcm.!default {
  type plug
  slave {
    pcm "hw:0,4"
  }
}

...and restart ALSA:

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# /etc/init.d/alsasound restart

See if that enables the speakers. Assuming this works, it may, however, disable headphone jack output. If you want to keep both outputs functional and be able to select which one you want, you can make an asound.conf like this:

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pcm.!default {
  type plug
  slave {
    pcm "hw:0,4"
  }
}

pcm.!headphones {
  type plug
  slave {
    pcm "hw:0,0"
  }
}

...and then when you want to use the headphones instead of the speakers, reference the ALSA device "headphones" in your playback application; for example:

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aplay -D headphones file.mp3

Note that many popular media players, such as xmms and mplayer, allow you to select an ALSA device through their GUI interface.

Hope that helps.