Debian Lenny Creative Labs SB Audigy SE

JBB · 08-07-2010, 06:36 PM

I hope someone here can help me. I've done a lot of searching and tried a number of things. But still no sound. My sound card is a SB Audigy SE. "lspci" lists m card as SB Audigy LS, but it does list the chipset for SB Audigy SE as far as I can tell (info from http://www.alsa-project.org/main/ind...-Creative_Labs).

Debian Lenny
kernel 2.6.26-2-686

aplay -l

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: CA0106 [CA0106], device 0: ca0106 [CA0106]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: CA0106 [CA0106], device 1: ca0106 [CA0106]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: CA0106 [CA0106], device 2: ca0106 [CA0106]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: CA0106 [CA0106], device 3: ca0106 [CA0106]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

dmesg | grep snd

[ 10.549860] snd-ca0106: Model 100a Rev 00000000 Serial 100a1102

lspci -v

00:0b.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy LS
Subsystem: Creative Labs Device 100a
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 19
I/O ports at d000 [size=32]
Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2
Kernel driver in use: CA0106
Kernel modules: snd-ca0106

Jeff

Drakeo · 08-07-2010, 09:34 PM

make sure you have alsa-utility pkg installed
open a terminal and type alsamixer now enable master and pcm and turn them up,
let me know how it goes.

Quote:

sudo apt-get upgrade alsa-utils

or

Quote:

sudo apt-get install alsa-utils

or assume root or use your package manager.

JBB · 08-07-2010, 10:30 PM

Quote:

make sure you have alsa-utility pkg installed
open a terminal and type alsamixer now enable master and pcm and turn them up,
let me know how it goes.

Have done all of that.

alsamixer doesn't even refer to enable master or pcm.

Drakeo · 08-08-2010, 07:35 AM

Quote:

alsamixer doesn't even refer to enable master or pcm.

use your up and down keys keys to enable it. the 00 at the bottom will turn red. to scroll to the left or right uses your left and right arrows to choose to choose capture device use the enter button. to learn this type

Quote:

man alsamixer

after that is done right click the little speaker icon and click configure or mixer or what ever gui program it uses.
make sure it is not muted and pcm is selected.

JBB · 08-08-2010, 06:40 PM

Hi Drakeo,

I cannot "enable master or pcm" if alsamixer does not offer these functions.

I'm using Alsamixer v1.0.16.

In upper left of the alsamixer screen I see:

Code:

Card:  CA0106
Chip:
View:  [Playback] Capture All
Item:  below are the items (my input)

At the bottom of the screen the Items listed are:

Code:

IEC958, IEC958 C, IEC958 F, IEC958 R, IEC958 V, Analog C, Analog F,Analog R, Analog S,Capture

Those are all of my choices in "payback view"; and I found nothing referring to enable master or pcm.

IEC958 seems to be enabled.
IEC958 C-V are all at 80%.
Capture is at 80%.

At this time all the other items are muted.
I have tried muting IEC items and putting the Analog items to 80% as well as other combinations. Still no sound.

I appreciate your time. Perhaps there is something else I can try.

Jeff

Drakeo · 08-09-2010, 07:38 AM

go into bios set up and if you have a setting for none windows NO O/S set it to that. Second while in there make sure your sound card is enabled if it is a pci card. if it is a on board card make sure bios is set to the correct one.

then open a terminal and type.

Quote:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

then type

Quote:

sudo modprobe snd-ca0106

then type

Quote:

sudo /etc/init.d gdm start

make sure in settings in Multimedia systems Selector" Sink: ESD and the Source at OSS

let me know what happens. step one bios makes sure there is no irq conflict
after that we stop the sound then we insert the module then restart the sound select the
correct setting for the OSS.

Quote:

[PCI] Not all features on all models supported. On the VX, white noise on playback unless initialized in Windows first.

And this is why I would never have that card. It was made for cheap windows O/S

JBB · 08-09-2010, 11:54 AM

Drakeo,

What sound card would you suggest. I bought the sound card because http://www.alsa-project.org/main/ind...-Creative_Labs said the card will work and all I wanted was some sound. I have no intentions of doing anything fancy.

I've tried everything you suggested. It seems to me that you are suggesting I get rid of alsa and go with OSS. Considering your comments about correct settings for OSS. From what I have read the two don't play well together.

Drakeo · 08-10-2010, 06:53 AM

I feel your frustration since I deal with hardware issues all the time. look here at the list of supported sound cards.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO/sound.html

craigevil · 08-10-2010, 07:51 AM

I really wish the *buntu users would realize that not every distro uses "sudo". It is not enabled by default on Debian.

The snd-emu10k1 ALSA driver supports Creative Technology's Sound Blaster Live!, Sound Blaster Audigy (excluding value/SE editions) and E-MU
Systems' "Digital Audio Systems" devices. Firmware from userspace is required for the E-MU 0404, 1212m, 1616, 1616m, 1820 and 1820m. E-MU firmware is not distributed by the Debian project; to acquire, refer to the procedure at http://wiki.debian.org/snd-emu10k1

Some Dell machines come with a "SB Live!" that isn't. PCI ID 1102:0006 is the "Software Accelerated DSP" based SB Live! which uses the snd-emu10k1x <ALSA> driver (not <snd-emu10k1>). It does stereo only (through both front and rear speakers) and perhaps SPDIF. It is only meant to work with the Dell driver for Windows XP. Complain to Dell if you wanted a real SB Live! OEM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sblivedelloem.jpg

I would also consider upgrading to Squeeze, with it being frozen it is more than stable enough for daily use.

JBB · 08-10-2010, 12:00 PM

Some success. I can play a music CD, here sounds on the net, and play xxx,wav from the terminal via aplay. But I can't play system sounds. Not a big deal as I would probably disable them; although I would like to win that battle.

Unfortunately, I can't tell exactly what I did. The only new thing I did was to disable the on-board sound in the bios. After that I did alsaconf.

This is the current view of alsamixer:

Attachment 4276

I tried different combinations, including the one shown above(along the way). If the image doesn't get posted you can view it here http://rosebusch.net/jeff/images/alsamixer_aug-9.jpg . With the IECs enabled I could get some sound out of the blue port on the sound card. With the current config I get good sound from the green port. Maybe someone else can make more sense of this. I'm just happy to have sound.

Thanks for your help.

P.S. Printing from Debian to an XP box was a lot easier than getting sound.

the trooper · 08-10-2010, 01:02 PM

Quote:

Some success. I can play a music CD, here sounds on the net, and play xxx,wav from the terminal via aplay. But I can't play system sounds

I thought that seemed a little familiar,see the following link for some possible solutions:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=27473

JBB · 08-10-2010, 02:57 PM

the trooper,

The link you provided did the trick for system sounds. Now I feel complete; for now anyhow.

I needed to install esound and libesd-alsa0.

the trooper · 08-11-2010, 08:05 AM

Glad to hear it worked.
If you are happy with result,use the thread tools and mark the thread solved.