alsa - card detected, media plays, no sound, not the usual problem

qwijibow · 03-21-2005, 08:12 AM

Ive seen a hundred of these types of problems, and the answer is almost always.... to use alsa mixer to un-mute the channels.

not in this case, although the simptoms are identicle.

Its a long story, but i will start at the beginning....

I was using Gentoo-2.6.9-r14 kernel. sound worked fine.
however, this kernel was crashing when i attempted to use my USB mouse.

2.6.9 is the latet stable gentoo kernel for amd64, so i used the 2.6.10 vanilla kernel (from kernel.org, unpatched)

this fixed my mouse problem, however the sound nolonger worked.

alsaconfig correctly detects my nForce-3 sound card, and correctly chooses the intel8x0 driver.

i used alsamixer to un-mute all channels (one strange thing, the master channel didnt have a volume, just mute / unmute, but i put this down to y mixer not having a master volume, only PCM volume, and th update in the alsa- drivers and libraries.)

still no sound. all alsa players apear to be playing fine, but i hear no sound.

At this point, i un-installed all alsa related packages, and re-compiled my kernel without ALSA drivers. i downloaded the latest stable alsa-utils, alsa-libs and alsa-driver from alsa-project.org, and compiled them (without OSS emulation)

i rememberd to run the ./snddevices script also (a failing point for many newbies ive noticed)

but still.... all players detect a sound card, they all play, but nothiing through the speakers.

all channles (even the microphone) have been unmuted and turned up.

im out of idea's

are their anyhidden alsa config files that could be causing this type of malfunction ???

anyways.. some technical data.
my specs... AMD64 3400+ Nforce-3 chipset, VNF3-250 chaintech motherboard.

lspci info

Code:

0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a1)
        Subsystem: Chaintech Computer Co. Ltd: Unknown device f646
        Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 20
        I/O ports at fb00
        I/O ports at fa00 [size=128]
        Memory at fdffb000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

from /dev/sndstat

Code:

bash-2.05b# cat /dev/sndstat
Sound Driver:3.8.1a-980706 (ALSA v1.0.8 emulation code)
Kernel: Linux qwijibow 2.6.10 #1 Mon Mar 21 02:33:54 GMT 2005 x86_64
Config options: 0

Installed drivers:
Type 10: ALSA emulation

Card config:
NVidia CK8S with CMI9761 at 0xfdffb000, irq 20

Audio devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Synth devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Midi devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Timers:
7: system timer

Mixers: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

should i be worried about the NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG ???
where is the config this device speaks of ???

thanks for any ideas / help / sympathy / donations for a better sound card

Ohh, and i am aware that Nvidia have released audio drivers for their nForce sound cards, however they are OSS only, and all my media software has been compiled without OSS support.

darkleaf · 03-21-2005, 08:17 AM

Are you also still in the audio group? Or were you root anyway?

qwijibow · 03-21-2005, 09:10 AM

FIXED !

in desperation, i started shouting at alsamixer randomly pushing random buttons preying for a miricle...

then i Muted the "IEC958 Capture Monitor" and sound started working...
i had a cd playing in the drive, so that i would know when it started working.
for some reasonm, muting the IEC958 fixed it.

So it was the un-muting of my channls which caused this porblem...
Well, thanks for the reply anyways.

jmr71769 · 04-08-2005, 04:21 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by qwijibow
FIXED !

in desperation, i started shouting at alsamixer randomly pushing random buttons preying for a miricle...

then i Muted the "IEC958 Capture Monitor" and sound started working...
i had a cd playing in the drive, so that i would know when it started working.
for some reasonm, muting the IEC958 fixed it.

So it was the un-muting of my channls which caused this porblem...
Well, thanks for the reply anyways.

works like a charm.

thanks for the pointer!

davatar · 05-23-2005, 07:25 PM

Hey, thank you so very much! I've been grumbling with this identical problem. We have the same motherboard even, which I was beginning to suspect might be the problem.

EDIT: Hmm, now my problem is getting the 5.1 audio to work. I have the multimedia card installed in the computer, and have support for it enabled in the kernel. =/

~Davatar

qwijibow · 05-25-2005, 08:41 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by davatar
Hey, thank you so very much! I've been grumbling with this identical problem. We have the same motherboard even, which I was beginning to suspect might be the problem.

EDIT: Hmm, now my problem is getting the 5.1 audio to work. I have the multimedia card installed in the computer, and have support for it enabled in the kernel. =/

~Davatar

lol, so thats what that little card thing is ???
i have no idea what its called, so i just ignored it.

how did you enable support for it in the kernel ?
what is it exactly ?

does it require a seperate driver ?

SCOSWriter · 06-01-2005, 12:45 PM

So much for old posts, whether anyone atually reads this or not, maybe someone knows.

I've been trying to get my IEC958 <B> OUTPUT <B>, or more commonly known as spidf, to work, on an nvidia 2 board (Asu"ck"s A7N8x-E).

My system tells me that everything is honky dory, video players run etc, but no sound. Its possible that the regular prts work but I'll never know. I only have a digital speaker system.

I've tried the spidf tweak for getting digital out to work,from the alsa.org site. Nada.

I'm basically looking for more ideas, because I'm exhausted. My distro (SuSE 9.2) comes with the most recent alsa driver (1.0.9). I even tried recompiling it, although it failed when I got to alsa-utils, when following the set by step instructions. The error returned on hit in google in German.

Maybe th fx in this thread might help. i.e. bash on the mixer buttons and prey, cause there are about 15 different controls which mean rather little to me.

I just want sound... please...

???

kornerr · 06-02-2005, 12:08 PM

I've recently downloaded alsa-1.0.9rc04
and it appeared that my "old" alsa-1.0.5 works better

SCOSWriter, you have intel-on-board?

SCOSWriter · 06-02-2005, 01:35 PM

Well the driver that is used is snd-intel8x0, but its an nvidia2 chipset board, and onboard sound (A7N8X-E)

I pretty sure that I would get sound if I were to use mini plugs, i.e. no digital, but I only have digital speakers.

My system tells me that everything is running fine, and everything modprobed ok.

just no sound.

Some people have been saying the permissions might be the culprit, so I going to check that I'm in the audio group when I get home. Something else about turning on the IEE*** whatever in the acsound.state file, although I tried all those options in the mixergui.