Sound - What is is, how does it work, and why will it NOT work at the same time?
 

So here we go agin

Ya know, i learn more things about linux by just asking simple questions on LQ then i do reading TONS of other peoples questions.

I recently bought a new laptop, installed mandriva on it. I got the wifi working (still a little wierd) with an openHal snapshot. All kinds of success. But now i must drop into 2 other subjects that have been bugging me alot. The first, is the SOUND.

What DOES work

+ All the sounds in KDE works just fine, from system sounds, to Amarok, to all the video players. The instant touch buttons on the top of the laptop work to change the sounds up and down, mute, play next/prev ,
stop, pause. All the audio editing programs have sound output.

+ All programs using SDL work just fine, from OpenArena to a few others. Most of the games that come with my Distro (i downloaded them all) work just fine.

What DOES NOT work

ALot. All the emulators i have do not work. ZSNES, Snes9x. (my most favorite thing to play)

About half the games i play do not work.

-Alien Arena
-MY FAVORITE - Enemy Territory (wolfenstein) (ID)

I bought QUAKE4 and installed it, worked fine, NO SOUND.

Anything that does not use SDL does not work.

BUT - MOST AGGRAVATING THEN ANYTHING
WINE does not have sound. And that puts me into the dirt. I use wine
for alot of the programs i use. And theres no support. On all other
computers i have the most recent wine release, sound works fine.

I figure because sounds only works HALF the time, this is not just a WINE problem.

THE QUESTION

How its set up (Under the (mandriva) Control Center:

Driver: Intel HDA driver (snd_hda_intel [ALSA])
[x] PulseAudio Enabled
[x] Enable 5.1 sound with Pulse Audio
[x] Automatic routing from ALSA to PulseAudio
[x] Enable user switching for audio applications

How do i find out what device i have?
Altec Lansing is the speakers but not the device right?
Is there some other driver i can use? Should i switch to OSS (if possible) or would that be dangerous?
I have no idea what i am doing in this area.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

lspci -v
 

00:07.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP67 High Definition Audio (rev a1)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 30cf
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21
Memory at f6480000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

(root) lspci -v
 

00:07.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP67 High Definition Audio (rev a1)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 30cf
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21
Memory at f6480000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [50] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask+ 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable-
Capabilities: [6c] HyperTransport: MSI Mapping Enable- Fixed+
Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

There's a few tips 'n' tricks here: http://ck.kolivas.org/faqs/audio_hints.txt. Start at the OpenAL games section to jump right in.

um yeah

what is that??

that doesnt help me at all.

wtf

/dev/dsp does not work

any program that uses that doesnt work

alot of programs 'auto' detect the audio - but they dont work.

obvously, audio is only half-way installed.

ANY HELP PLEASE

You saidAnd this is supposed to be your appreciation...um yeah

You'll get plenty of help with responses like that!!

Did you even read, or better yet try, any of the suggestions listed on that page?

Yet you have determined...Hmmm, so what could possibly be missing??

Oh, and for the record Enemy Territory (wolfenstein) (ID) & QUAKE4 both have sound under wine on my Mandriva.

yup
 

thanks you. thats helpful also.

Ok i read into what you told me too. And for some magical reason, Snes9x audio works now. Which is great. But amazingly enough, all the other things that use /dev/dsp do not.

When i run enemy territory this is what i get for the sound output:

------- sound initialization -------
/dev/dsp: Input/output error
Could not mmap /dev/dsp
------------------------------------

And for Snes9x (now working)

Starting sound
--> (OSS : /dev/dsp)...OK
Map_HiROMMap

I tried using that OpenAL library stuff, but i will not compile, i imagine my sound card is not compat like it says.
The wine stuff is very interesting also... it says


the prob i have is, exactly what is... where is.. the 'in config file' for wine.

well, theres lots to do. lots to figure out. SORRY for being an asshole NEXUS