Videos don't have sound
 

Hey everybody.

I installed Slackware and I've really liked it, but I have had some problems with sound, specially in videos.
Initially it was with mp3s, but I installed "gst-plugins-ugly" and now it's working fine. nevertheless, sound in videos (you tube and downloaded ones(mp4)) still doesn't work; It's really strange since mp3 work and system sound work too.

*I already instaled ALSA.

So your video player's sound output is getting directed to the wrong place.

What player do you use?

I use Mplayer and sometimes Kplayer, but nither
of the installed players work anyway.

If you have a Video Card with an HDMI output (most cards these days), make sure your video player is not sending sound to HDMI by default. This drove me nuts on my Nvidia GT430 so that I just blacklisted the Alsa nvidia HDMI modules. Also, KDE can be tricky in how you tell phonon to route sound from Alsa and which "hardware" device.

These CLI commands are your best friends for audio troubleshooting:

alsamixer
aplay
speaker-test

No, it doesn't work even with HDMI

When i wrote speaker-test, I got this:

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 1 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:1741: (_snd_pcm_hw_open) Unknown field slave
Playback open error: -22,Argumento inválido (Invalid Argument)

Last two lines seem to tell there's a problem.

I have the same thing and multiple cards and I had to point alsa to the card I wanted to use. hope this helps.

Could you tell me please how you did that?

sure open a terminal and type alsamxer that will be your default card. that is what it placed it as. and if that is not the card you want as default then we go on to other things to do. in alsamixer press F6 to see all your devices. http://alsa.opensrc.org/Alsamixer

or you can also as root use this cat /proc/asound/cards
This one is mine but when I installed the C-Media card bios always set it to 0 position.
so I finally just edited my /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf


I heard other ways to do it with alsa but the fact is this works for me and
that's what matters. This tells alsa what slot to use for the first second third device after that all the other sound devices load
after them. Note the do not edit yes well ok I do edit it. Learned it from Alsa manual.

I tried all that you said but sound's still not working, when I "cat /proc/asound/cards" get this:


I'm begging to think it has something to do with the drivers, 'cause Amarok reproduces MP3 correctly, but xmms tells me to check if my soundcard is configured or if the output plugin is the right one or if a program is locking the soundcard.
And Audacious gives this error
Also once KDE showed a message that told me that some audio devices weren't found, and if I wanted the system to "forget" about them,
but in Kinfo center they all appear anyway:

Sometimes I have a similar problem with SMPlayer, a different frontend for MPlayer. I usually resolve it by deleting ~/.config/smplayer.

What is your lspci output for your integrated audio

lspci shows:

And add the following line:

or maybe :

No man, none of them worked, I even rebooted my pc, when I turned it on, a message said that it had stoped detecting some audio devices.
this problem is kinda' weird

I was seeing the audio configuration in Amarok, and i saw that phonon is in charge of managing audio devices, it detects a lot, but the only one that works is HDA Intel PCH (92HD91BXX Analog) there are also the HDMI ones but they don't sound, I imagine they do when a wire pluged. The rest have error messages, except hw:0,3 it doesn't show any error messages, but simply doesn't sound, yesterday it did, I don't know what hapenned. the fact is that when the mouse pinter stands still over the HDA Intel PCH (92HD91BXX Analog) it says that it has two devices "in it"


I don't know if this can help somehow.

did you unmute your speakers and PCM?

amixer sset Master unmute

Lets start at the beginning.

1. Make sure you have speakers plugged into the correct audio jack.
2. Check 'lsmod' to make sure all of your sound modules are loading.
3. Check 'lspci -k' to see what kernel module is loading.
4. Is this motherboard chip? Check BIOS!
5. Are you using the stock kernel or did you "roll your own?"
6. Are you using a kernel/alsa package that supports you chipset?
7. Did you make '/etc/rc.d/rc.alsa' executable?
8. Restore everything to default settings, reboot to CLI, and run alsamixer. Make sure NONE of your audio outputs are muted. Crank up the volume of any that are low.
9. If you installed pulseaudio, I swear I'll beat you with a stick! ;)

At the very least, alsa should have automagically set up /etc/sound.conf with:
You need to make sure you don't have audio modules loaded for which their is no hardware installed. AND you need to make sure snd-hda-intel is the correct module.

While still in the CLI (no KDE etc.), run this (example from my Slack14.0 with CL Audigy):
(Note that I have blacklisted HDMI and USB webcam so those won't show.). Hopefully you see a similar list, if errors, then you may have the wrong or bad module installed (or rc.alsa did not run on boot). Now for all regular outputs try each with, for example,
This outputs to "default" 4 channel (front and rear speakers). This will tell you too if you are plugged into front vs rear speaker jacks. I can't tell you how many times THAT caught me off guard! See (hear) which channel works, if any. If you get NO sound an any channel, any errors, you've got something borked in hardware or software. You can try reinstalling the alsa packages, find out what module you need to load, etc.

Good luck!

King that is a wonderful answer truth is that should play right out of the box on a full install. un-mute the auto-mute and in kde go to settings and keep testing till you get them speakers in the right plugins.

Thanks for the answer, but I tried and checked eveything you said and the audio just ain't working, it isn't a hardware problem, I just booted OpenSuse from a live CD and videos sounded pretty well. I'll keep investigating.

I just came with this hypothesis:

First look at this image: http://imageshack.us/a/img692/2626/wy5t.png

That image was taken from Phonon, as you know it's the Mutimedia framework of KDE, so only native application (QT) are managed by it (I don't know if this is 100% true, maybe I'm saying a nonsense). The fact is that Amarok "follows" what phonon says when setting sound devices, and if one doesn't work, it tries with the next one, and as you can see, DEFAULT shows error when tested... but since it's at the bottom of the list, it has shown no problems, that's why Amarok is ale to play. BUT NEITHER OF THE VIDEO PLAYERS I HAVE ARE QT NATIVE, THEY ALL ARE GTK, SO PHONON DOESN'T MANAGE THEM, BUT ALSA DOES, AND ALSO THE CONFIGURATON SETTING OF EACH PROGRAM, AND ALL THIS TIME I'VE TRYING TO SET THE "DEFAULT" DEVICE AS THE DEFAULT DEVICE (sorry for the repetition), THE SAME ONE THAT PHONON PROOVES DOESN'T WORK, SO I'LL TRY THESE SOLUTIONS:

-Download a native KDE video player that supports PHONON and see if sound works.
-Replace in alsa the "default" card for one of the " HDE Intel PCH" ones.

For the last one I need some help, since I don't know how to do it, could somone explain me please?

asero12,
If you go to the top of the audio list "reproduccion de audio" and make sure the working sound devices/channels are at the top of the list, then ALL KDE apps will use those sound outputs. Kplayer "should" pick it up if "output driver" set to "Auto". Otherwise, set to alsa, and pick a matching output device that works. Or, on mplayer, go to its configuration and from the "audio' tab and do the same thing.

Again, if "speaker-test" did not give sound on some or all channels, clear out all custom settings, reinstall the ALSA package, chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa and reboot to try again. Speaker-test MUST work on valid analog output channels found with 'aplay -L" This shouldn't be difficult. I haven't had issues with Alsa on intel chipsets and Creative Labs cards in many years.

On you Slackware DVD/USB nstall media (example for Slackware64 14.0) reinstall, as root,
slackware64/ap/alsa-utils-1.0.26-x86_64-1.txz
slackware64/l/alsa-lib-1.0.26-x86_64-1.txz
slackware64/l/alsa-oss-1.0.25-x86_64-1.txz

with "upgradepkg --reinstall <package-name>"

Problem got fixed fellas.

I tried with speaker-test -Dplug:default -c4 -twav as kingbeowulf said,
but it didn't sound... so looked up for the name's of the other devices (default, front, hdmi, etc)
and tried with front. it sounded, so I opened /etc/asound.conf with nano and replaced all the defaults for fronts like this:


and videos are sounding now.


Thank you very much for the ones who helped me with this problem. ;)

Someone read the arch wiki on ALSA