I consider this more of a software problem rather than a hardware problem since I have gotten audio to work in mplayer before.

This is the error of particular significance...
Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.

I have Google'd around for the error, as well as searched around LQ quite a bit, with no substantial clues as to what is causing this.

I think the following may be an important clue, although I have no idea what the implications of "drain_dac, dma timeout" are.

$ dmesg | grep audio
i810_audio: Audio Controller supports 2 channels.
i810_audio: Defaulting to base 2 channel mode.
i810_audio: Resetting connection 0
i810_audio: AC'97 codec 0 supports AMAP, total channels = 2
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?
i810_audio: drain_dac, dma timeout?


I have done a chmod 777 on both /dev/dsp and /dev/mixer, with no luck (non-expectantly). Sound is inoperable on all file formats I've tested; which includes wmv, mpg and avi. In fact, avi files fail to even play.

Is it worth a try recompiling mplayer?

After many tries at compiling it several months ago, I gave up and ended up installing it with apt-get. Then, I decided to add essential-codecs, so I uninstalled mplayer-586 and compiled from source with no difficulties ?whatsoever?. Ever since then (I think) it has been having problems with audio. Would the codecs work if I were to install mplayer using apt-get...?


Thanks

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...der=descending

read thru these..........dma timeout may pertain to your hard disk (direct memory access)......

Which audio output sink are you attempting to use. For instance, aRts takes exclusive control of alsa, and as such mplayer -ao alsa foo.mp3 will fail since the alsa resource is busy. Try mplayer -ao help and then picking a different audio sink from the list that -ao help generates.

Apparently alsa was not installed on my system, so I installed it as well as its dependency, with apt-get. I also installed the alsa-module for my kernel.

Here's the options for mplayer -ao help:
mpegpes DVB audio output
oss OSS/ioctl audio output
esd EsounD audio output
nas NAS audio output
null Null audio output
pcm RAW PCM/WAVE file writer audio output

I don't know... how do I find out?

I don't know which to select. Should aRts be available in the list?


[ edit ]
One other thing to point out...
I also receive the message Try adding "echo 1024 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq" to your system startup scripts. but I don't know where the startup script is in Debian.

Odd, if you installed alsa it should now appear in the list, though oss works ok. My hunch would be to use -ao esd, though you want to make sure esound is al ready started before attempting to use it. If it works you can make the changes permanent in ~/.mplayer/config

p.s. I just threw aRts out as an example

How do I make sure esound is started?
Whenever I try to select a specific audio output, it lists off mplayer's basic options and keys for some reason. Therefore, I've just added ao=esd to mplayer's config file. Will this work the same as doing it from the command line?

Yep... alsa is not in the list for some reason.

perhaps there was some confusion, mplayer -ao esd dosn't actually do anything. You would have to do mplayer -ao esd foo.mp3. I'm not sure, you on debian, on my computer esound has an init script, but you can start it from the command line by typing esd. Also, some programs can start it automatically.

Hmm, I got it to work by starting esd and typing mplayer -ao esd foo.wmv. In fact, once esd is started, I can simply type mplayer foo.wmv.

Now I just have to find some way to keep esd started.

You might want to check your init scripts for something that looks like esd, and if its not there, you could always write your own and add it to the default runlevel. Glad you got it working though.

An init script for esd doesn't appear to exist. Is it difficult to write an init script from scratch? I've only been using Debian for 3 months or so.

It shouldn't be, all you need to do is use an existing one as a template.

Sorry to revive this thread (as it is now unrelated to my difficulties with mplayer) but I am now not receiving any sound whatsoever from vlc, mplayer and totem. Also, when I do a dmesg | grep audio, nothing in returned. My system was shutdown due to a power outage and now my soundcard is apparently going undetected.

However, lspci reveals my audio controller just fine.