LinuxQuestions.org - ALSA or ARTS strangeness

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ALSA or ARTS strangeness

I dist-upgraded my Debian sid box the other night, and now I am seeing several strange things. For instance, my sound card, a SBLive, is not being detected correctly.

lspci shows that I have

01:08.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 (rev 07)
01:08.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Live! Game Port (rev 07)

And this is how it has appeared in the mixer for years. However, kmix is now reporting the sound card as a SigmaTel STAC9708,11

Running mplayer, for instance, it errored out on alsa-lib repeatedly:

alsa-init: using device default
alsa-lib: confmisc.c:670: (snd_func_card_driver) cannot find card '0'
alsa-lib: conf.c:3479: (_snd_config_evaluate) function
snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such device
alsa-lib: confmisc.c:391: (snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
alsa-lib: conf.c:3479: (_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat
returned error: No such device
alsa-lib: confmisc.c:1070: (snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
alsa-lib: conf.c:3479: (_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer
returned error: No such device
alsa-lib: conf.c:3947: (snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such device
alsa-lib: pcm.c:2146: (snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
alsa-init: playback open error: No such device
Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.
Audio: no sound

Whats more, I am unable to record with mencoder. I checked the bugs on most of the associated packages, and most were a year or more old.

What can I do to get things back to scratch?

Thanks,
--Storm

This appears to be alsa related.

Check to see which driver is being loaded (lsmod). It's possible that the EMU10K1 driver is using the controls from the ac97 driver, as the codec on some of the SB cards are ac97 compliant.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GrueMaster

These are the modules loading:

Code:

snd_emu10k1_synth      5504  0 

snd_emux_synth        28608  1 snd_emu10k1_synth

snd_seq_virmidi        4864  1 snd_emux_synth

snd_seq_midi_emul      4864  1 snd_emux_synth

snd_seq_oss            26368  0 

snd_seq_midi            5856  0 

snd_seq_midi_event      5568  3 snd_seq_virmidi,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi

snd_seq                40912  8 snd_emux_synth,snd_seq_virmidi,snd_seq_midi_emul,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event

snd_bt87x              10696  2 

snd_emu10k1            94884  3 snd_emu10k1_synth

snd_rawmidi            17888  3 snd_seq_virmidi,snd_seq_midi,snd_emu10k1

snd_ac97_codec        79072  1 snd_emu10k1

snd_ac97_bus            1728  1 snd_ac97_codec

snd_pcm_oss            39328  0 

snd_mixer_oss          13376  5 snd_pcm_oss

snd_pcm                65032  4 snd_bt87x,snd_emu10k1,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss

snd_seq_device          6604  7 snd_emu10k1_synth,snd_emux_synth,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq,snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi

snd_timer              17156  3 snd_seq,snd_emu10k1,snd_pcm

snd_util_mem            3136  2 snd_emux_synth,snd_emu10k1

snd_hwdep              6468  2 snd_emux_synth,snd_emu10k1

snd                    39844  14 snd_emux_synth,snd_seq_virmidi,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_bt87x,snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_device,snd_timer,snd_hwdep

snd_page_alloc          7240  3 snd_bt87x,snd_emu10k1,snd_pcm

The kernel hasn't changed:
Linux defiant 2.6.16 #1 PREEMPT Fri Jun 23 06:15:37 EDT 2006 i686 GNU/Linux

Thanks,
--Storm

Looking through the alsa code, SigmaTel STAC9708 codec is only named in alsa-kernel/pci/ac97/ac97_codec.c (and a header in the same directory). Looking through the alsa-kernel/pci/emu10k1/ directory, the code is tied to the ac97 code very tightly.

Back to the original problem, try installing the latest alsa packages (driver, lib, and utils). The driver and the lib need to be close to the same revision, as they are tied together. Sometimes, distributions can get skewed when running close to the tip.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GrueMaster

Okay, this is getting curiouser and curiouser. I looked on my wife's machine (also running Debian/sid), and the alsa versions are the same:

ii alsa-base 1.0.11-5
ii alsa-tools-gui 1.0.11-1
ii alsa-utils 1.0.11-6
ii alsamixergui 0.9.0rc2-1-9

Her sound works fine. And actually, my sound works, after a fashion. Apps like tvtime work fine, however, mplayer does not. On my box, I compiled 2.6.17, however, I am running on the 2.6.16 that I compiled back in June, which worked until I booted into 2.6.17 and back again after finding that no sound worked.

--Storm