(K)ubuntu ALSA with two sound cards. Help :)

Groovelab · 04-25-2005, 08:38 PM

Kubuntu, fantastic, however I have a ONE and only issue I have spent hours scouring the net with no success in finding a workaround.

I have an NVIDIA NForce 2 based motherboard with onboard sound.

ALSA plays perfectly through onboard sound (NVidia NForce2 Chipset),
but my M-AudioPhile 2496 does not play, however is succesfully
detected in all forms.

foreman@ubuntuJFF:~$ cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [nForce2 ]: NFORCE - NVidia nForce2
NVidia nForce2 with ALC655 at 0xef001000, irq 21
1 [M2496 ]: ICE1712 - M Audio Audiophile 24/96
M Audio Audiophile 24/96 at 0xc000, irq 18

KInfoCenter, shows a similar story. However it shows the Synth mode is
disabled. Other posts for installing an ICE Envy VIA chip card
shows the synth should be enabled.

How do I tell Alsa, to make the M-Audio the default soundcard to play
through?

Also, I tried running "alsaconf" and after doing a whereis
command it is not found... Yet if I try "apt-get install alsaconf" it
will say the alsa-utils are installed and upto date.' So I can't do
anything that way.

John

P.S. Solved below, ARTS in KDE/Kubuntu hates my Card, whereas GNOME and ALSA behave well with regular Ubuntu. Had to re-install dumping Kubuntu infavor of Ubuntu from ISO CD.

Groovelab · 04-25-2005, 10:49 PM

XMMS allows choice of which play back device. I tried choosing the M-Audio card.

XMMS won't work either, even if I choose either OSS, or ALSA for the M-audio card, when I try mp3 playback it says device is not properly configured or something along those lines.

However it will work for the onboard audio.

I thought about apt-get remove alsa-utils, etc... but it threatens to remove the ubuntu-base as well...

GRRR...

ilikejam · 04-26-2005, 01:02 AM

Why not just switch off the on-board sound card in BIOS? Or do you need both cards to be working?

Dave

Groovelab · 04-26-2005, 09:56 AM

Brilliant!

I would still like to know which .conf or whatever to edit, and I was reading and reading about the index=0 and all that for the files, but I can find where something like modules.conf is stored in ubuntu and although I found /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base and a few other similar files, I'm not sure which one to edit...

But I will try the BIOS idea it never even occurred to me!

Thanks, John

P.S. If anyone does know how to set the index priority that would be excellent incase someday (having a recording studio) I need both cards.

ilikejam · 04-26-2005, 11:31 AM

If all your apps are ALSA aware, you can name your cards in /etc/asound.conf, and use the card names instead of the normal 'default' output.

Dave

ilikejam · 04-26-2005, 08:57 PM

Hi.

I've been messing about with asoundrc files myself (getting software mixing working so I can have two apps playing sound at the same time etc).

Anyway, as I said above, you can name your cards in /etc/asound.conf or ~/.asoundrc

As an example, you might have something like:

Code:

pcm.nforce {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "hw:0,0"
}

pcm.maudio {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "hw:1,0"
}

In your ALSA aware apps, you can then use 'maudio' or 'nforce' as the output device, and you should get output from the appropriate device. N.B. a lot of apps don't work properly under ALSA, so you might not be able to use these names.

Dave

Groovelab · 05-08-2005, 12:16 AM

Ubuntu with GNOME and ALSA detects and plays my audio card. (Default ISO install)

(K)ubuntu with KDE's Arts, does not behave well with ALSA. (Default ISO install)

1.)Also Kubuntu lacks Ubuntu's (automated bug-report tool.)

2.)Kubuntu Also lacks "Ubuntu's device database tool"

ilikejam · 05-08-2005, 06:03 PM

KDE's artsd should be killed, hard, until it is dead. Very dead.

Also, anyone that writes applications which cause artsd to be launched should be, at a bare minimum, made to feel mildly uncomfortable for an unspecified length of time.

That's what I think anyway. aRts is one of the reasons I stopped using KDE, and moved to Fluxbox. Once the OSS interface is finally put to rest, all of this will be a distant memory anyway...

Dave