No sound on fresh install w/ Audigy 2 ZS

This is really a newbie question/problem, but its also Ubuntu specific.
I installed Ubuntu 5.04 yesterday (first time with Linux) and have been setting it all up, but I have been unable to get sound to work at all. My sound card is listed properly in the Device Manager and I can choose it as the device for the ALSA volume control (the Ubuntu GUI volume control that is), but no sound comes out. Its not muted and the volume is set really loud.

Before yelling at me, please understand that I have looked around a LOT for help with this, but nothing has solved the problem for me, either because I'm too much of a n00b to know where to find folders/files that were referred to, or because they were referring to a different distro.

I have all the ALSA stuff installed in the package manager and everything.

It is the going through the console to modify config files and change options in driver directories and such where I tend to get completely lost. Also, I'm very new to Linux, so a lot of the console commands are still unfamiliar to me.

I understand that there are a few 'simple' possible fixes for this type of problem, I just need a quick set of instructions that I can say "wtf" to where necessary...

Most of these threads seem to get linked to FAQs, which thus far have just confused the hell out of me. Feel free to do that, but I think I'd need to ask a few (or possibly a lot of) questions about it.

So yes, any suggestions are welcome, and thank you in advance for your help.

(Man it sucks to be a n00b )

Try rebooting and *only* turning the main volume up. I had several problems with my Audigy when I was trying to get it to work, and it was all because I went through and turned everything up - it turns out that some sliders actually mute your output - something to do with which type of audio jack you are enabling. Another common fix is to make sure that you headphone jack is set to off rather than on since it will be trying to push sound out through your headphone jack rather than your speakers if it's on. FWIW, IMO sound is the worst aspect of linux, or at least the hardest to get working correctly many times.

Thanks for your suggestions, unfortunately none of them seemed to have solved the problem...
Should I mute all but the master volume? And is that just the ones that are showing, or should I enable them all in preferences and then mute them all?
By turning off the headphone do you mean muting that volume slider, or can you turn it off somewhere else? As far as I know my speaker and headphone output jacks are one and the same... (I'm not using digital out or anything, just analog 5.1)

In that case, please post the output of:

lspci

and

lsmod | grep snd

This will show us what's currently loaded/detected on your system.

lspci:

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (different version?) (rev c1)
0000:00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 1 (rev c1)0000:00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 4 (rev c1)0000:00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 3 (rev c1)0000:00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 2 (rev c1)0000:00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 5 (rev c1)0000:00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 ISA Bridge (rev a4)
0000:00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce2 SMBus (MCP) (rev a2)
0000:00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
0000:00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
0000:00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
0000:00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 External PCI Bridge (rev a3)0000:00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation nForce2 IDE (rev a2)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (rev c1)
0000:01:09.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy (rev 04)
0000:01:09.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy MIDI/Game port (rev 04)
0000:01:09.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Creative Labs SB Audigy FireWire Port (rev 04)
0000:01:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8169 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)
0000:01:0e.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
0000:02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R350 [Radeon 9800 Pro]
0000:02:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R350 [Radeon 9800 Pro] (Secondary)



lsmod:

Module Size Used by
proc_intf 4100 0
freq_table 4100 0
cpufreq_userspace 4572 0
cpufreq_ondemand 6172 0
cpufreq_powersave 1920 0
video 16260 0
sony_acpi 6280 0
pcc_acpi 11264 0
button 6800 0
battery 10244 0
container 4608 0
ac 4996 0
ipv6 229504 9
usbhid 29376 0
af_packet 20744 2
r8169 17928 0
ohci1394 31876 0
emu10k1_gp 3840 0
snd_emu10k1 81668 3
snd_rawmidi 22944 1 snd_emu10k1
snd_seq_device 8332 2 snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi
snd_ac97_codec 64608 1 snd_emu10k1
snd_pcm_oss 47652 0
snd_mixer_oss 16768 2 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 84872 4 snd_emu10k1,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 23300 1 snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 9604 2 snd_emu10k1,snd_pcm
snd_util_mem 4608 1 snd_emu10k1
snd_hwdep 9220 1 snd_emu10k1
snd 50276 12 snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,sn d_hwdep
soundcore 9824 2 snd
shpchp 86116 0
pci_hotplug 30512 1 shpchp
ehci_hcd 29444 0
ohci_hcd 19848 0
usbcore 107384 4 usbhid,ehci_hcd,ohci_hcd
i2c_nforce2 6400 0
i2c_core 21264 1 i2c_nforce2
nvidia_agp 7452 1
agpgart 31784 1 nvidia_agp
analog 10784 0
gameport 4608 2 emu10k1_gp,analog
floppy 54864 0
pcspkr 3816 0
rtc 12216 0
md 43856 0
dm_mod 53116 1
capability 5000 0
commoncap 7808 1 capability
evdev 9088 0
tsdev 7488 0
sr_mod 16036 0
sbp2 22408 0
scsi_mod 119936 2 sr_mod,sbp2
ieee1394 100408 2 ohci1394,sbp2
psmouse 19336 0
mousedev 11160 1
parport_pc 34372 1
lp 10792 0
parport 33480 2 parport_pc,lp
ide_cd 38532 0
cdrom 36508 2 sr_mod,ide_cd
ext3 120968 0
jbd 54168 1 ext3
ide_generic 1664 0
ide_disk 18176 3
amd74xx 13340 1
ide_core 118988 4 ide_cd,ide_generic,ide_disk,amd74xx
unix 26164 731
thermal 13576 0
processor 22708 1 thermal
fan 4612 0
fbcon 34048 0
font 8448 1 fbcon
bitblit 5120 1 fbcon
vesafb 6948 0
cfbcopyarea 3968 1 vesafb
cfbimgblt 3072 1 vesafb
cfbfillrect 3584 1 vesafb


Need grep snd aswell?

Hmmm - that looks ok AFAICT - my Audigy looks more or less exactly the same, so it seems the card has been detected and the modules are being loaded. I guess before digging any deeper, some basic questions should be asked. Are you sure that you have your speakers jacked into the correct output (ie, not your onboard sound jacks, not your mic jack, etc.)? How are you testing sound? If you run "alsamixer" are master and all the PCM volumes turned up?

I just went thru and turned all the PCM volumes up (including the 400 million emu10k ones) and tried playing some music but nothing comes out. The speakers thump (quietly) while its booting just like they do when I boot WinXP, presumably when it initialises the card or whatever. The sound effects (in the form of a 'beep') in 'Robots' just come out of the PC speaker I've noticed (even when its muted? :-u). Don't know whether that suggests anything though. ^^'
I checked the plugs but everything seems to be fine, and it worked when I lasted booted into XP (which was after I found this problem)
I've done no driver installation or configuration, the way it is now is just whatever it picked up automatically. I did install all the packages to do with 'alsa' that weren't 'alsaplayer', but that's all.

*Plays an MP3 in XMMS*
The little bar visualisation is going like crazy, but no sound from the speakers.

YES! I GOT IT!

I was going over a previous thread, and decided to try the terminal version of alsamixer, because the guy who posted in that thread seemed to think it was a good idea. I just went across and maxed everything out, and suddenly very loud static came through on my speakers. There was one volume control, "Audigy Analogue/Digital Output Jack" which I had enabled in the preferences for the graphical alsamixer while scanning through the list, but it for some reason didn't appear on the controls. It didn't stand out when I glanced past it because I just saw "Audigy" "Digital" "Output" and enabled it because it was an Audigy one but didn't pay it enough mind to notice that it didn't appear even though I told it to. So yes, I will be hastier in trying the terminal approach next time.

Thanks VERY much for all your help, snarkout, its muchly appreciated.

Cool!

I think that's probably the slider I was describing intially. Many people have had the opposite issue, where they turn that slider up, and doing so muted their non-digital jacks. I had endless problems getting my audigy setup initially, but now that it's running, the 5.1 out of it rocks. I watch more movies on my PC than my TV at this point :-)

saw this and thought i had some usefull input.....
yeah i had the same problem
i should just look more before running around in utter panic
used mixer: KMix (kubuntu)
on the most right side of the mixer there are 3 additional sliders : EMU10K1 PCM, EMU10K1 PCM Send, EMU10K1 PCM Send Routing
if these sliders are down you will only have 1 speaker output (1 audio card config) when sliding EMU10K1 PCM all your speakers wil start to spew out sound dunno what the others stand for,....