soundblaster live in rh8.0 (sound but no sound)
 

I am running rh8 and using gnome. The system detected my sb 128 live as an ensoniq card type es1370, I get all the normal sytem sounds (startup tunes etc) but if I try to use a music cd although the cd player starts up and plays the cd I never hear any music. It goes down a black hole. So I have sounds but no music. Volume is set high. Any ideas about this woul;d be appreciated. n.b It is currently still a dual boot machine and all is ok if I boot xp i.e no hardware issues.:rolleyes:

log into root and in the command line type this:

insmod emu10k1

by that im guessing your chipset is that of the command SB Live! ones, the PCI 512 versions share the same chipset also.

if you dont get anywhere search for more information about kernel modules, in debian we got a little thing called modconf, not sure if its in rh8.

in this ver of rh i dont seem to have sndcfg not according to my search anyway, I have tried also to load alsa without success.

If you're getting system sounds then it's not a problem with your soundcard or sound server right? I bet if you played an mp3 from your hard drive it would work fine.

You need to create a symlink from the actual device name of your cdrom (ie /dev/hdd or whatever) to /dev/cdrom, then make sure you have permission to use it: chmod 666 /dev/cdrom

Did the CD drive ever play music CDs in another OS successfully? There happens to be a little wire inside your computer that goes from the CD drive to the soundcard, some computers don't have it wired up right or at all. It is also possible to disable the CD input on the soundcard, see if your mixer program has it listed.

darin, youre a smart man. everyone else is telling him to use all these configs, and i'm thinking, they CDrom is obviously not hooked up to the sound card, since the sound works. I may not know linux, but i know computers

Uh huh, then how come it works for him in Windows. Five bucks says my solution is the correct one :D

I'm in. 5 bux, whoever loses has to donate their 5 bux to either affero under on behalf of the winner, or directly to LQ. :)

I'm bettin the audio cable is simply not connected from the drive to the soundcard.

Bulliver, the reason I'm bettin on this is because Win doesn't need this cable, it streams the music via the IDE cables if needed IIRC. I'll happily donate my 5 bux if I am wrong though ;)

Cool

Also, I believe it's not a permissions or symlink problem because they said they can see a CD player playing the music, they just can't hear it. More evidence to lead me to believe it's just the audio cable from the ROM to the Sound card.

Cool

Jeez, I gotta keep my mouth shut. I didn't know windows used the ide ribbons! Sherlock I isn't.

Akims razor: the simplest solution is usually the correct one.

BTW: I can't donate money because I don't have a credit card. That's why I keep bugging Jeremy to take money orders ;)

stchoooolen from hackers "mess with the best, die like the rest"

well more details are obviously required here.
masterc is correct in that ide will allow music to be played via ide in the latest versions of windows (I'm running XP as dual boot)
however masterc is wrong this time about my sound cable not being connected, it is definitly connected to my CD player.
fstab for this device reads.../dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,r o 0 0
when an audio cd is inserted, linux wakes up, launches the cd player and the counter counts up to the heavens, but no music is ever heard. Volumes is set to blow my head off, no mutes etc.

Did you try the symlink? There's five bucks riding on this one :D

Okay, forget that. The only thing I can think of is that the other end of that cable is plugged into your onboard soundcard(if you have one) and linux is using your pci soundcard, or vice versa.

Just a lark: run "ls -l /dev/dsp" and "ls -l /dev/mixer" and post the results here.

Do mp3s play from your HDD? If you don't have any download one and try. Actually, you said you were getting system sounds right?

Don't forget...

There is kmix in KDE and some distros have a command line mixer called....mixer, it's possible one of these has muted the CD input on your soundcard. Someone chime in with how you access the mixer in gnome, I'm a hardware/network guy and can't even get my mouse wheel working in X so I'm the wrong one to ask about this kinda schtuff. <-- :newbie:

P.S. I didn't think the IDE cable carried sound either, I know some programs like MP3 rippers can do DAE which pulls the bits off the CD like a file and then turns em into sound info but audio signals through IDE that don't sound right. I'll blame MasterC when my roomie gets mad that I ripped open his XP box to check ;)

P.S.S. Creative gobbled up some el-cheapo soundcard companies around the time of the SB128 so it could be that the SB128 uses an ensonic chip.

P.S.S.S. When linux plays music CDs it doesn't really mount the drive since it's not reading files, it just sends commands to the drive to pump data off track x through the audio wires.

Pretty much we won't need to worry about your fstab. I'm still shooting for the audio cable (and am saving 5 bux just in case it's not ;) ) I think it may either be plugged in to the wrong card, or the wrong port.

How to open up a mixer in gnome, type kmix, gmix or aumix (or some others). All mixers work in all environments as long as they are installed. (Off note: Darin, have you tried adding ZAxisMapping 4,5 to your /etc/X11/XF86Config file? )

And you said there is a cable, is it digital or analog audio cable from the drive to the soundcard?

Still pretty sure the driver he'll need is emu10k1.

Cool