Debian 9 on Acer Aspire One ZA3: problems with audio.

Wario. · 07-29-2017, 03:09 AM

Dear Community,

it's finally time for me to use again my old laptop

As every wise Linux users, I didn't expect things going so smoothly, indeed...

When I play an audio/video file, there is some sound from the speakers, but it is highly non-fluent. If I could describe a right output as "111111..", what I am listening should seem like "101001...".

Alsamixer claims:

Code:

Card: Pulseaudio
Chip: Pulseaudio

And I can shift via F6 to:

Code:

Card: HDA Intel (MID)
Chip: Realtek 2AC272X

but the results are unfortunately the same.
Lshw shows:

Code:

 *-multimedia
             description: Audio device
             product: System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) HD Audio Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1b
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1b.0
             version: 07
             width: 64 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pm pciexpress bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=snd_hda_intel latency=0
             resources: irq:22 memory:b0050000-b0053fff

I would like to remark how this problem was still true with the previous version of Debian (8). I have never tried other distro here, and I would be particularly glad if I succeeded in solving it on Debian. Finally, a dual-boot with Windows 7 suggests that the hardware works fine.

Thanks in advance for any help

aus9 · 07-29-2017, 04:43 AM

I am guessing you want laptop speakers rather than connect to a surround sound system?

If so take a screenshot of

Code:

alsamixer -c0

or press F6 and choose the analog and upload to
imgur.com

Wario. · 07-29-2017, 06:11 AM

Exactly, I would be happy in having just my headphones working well

Here is the alsamixer screenshot:
https://imgur.com/a/HuzO5

aus9 · 07-29-2017, 08:48 AM

Ok are they all the playback controls?

some sound devices have a control for auto muting speakers when headphones are detected.

anyhow use the arrow keys to get to each control and raise all of them

then use your panel speaker applet to control the master level

2) if you do not have an applet install pavucontrol which is a GUI speaker and settings control panel

IsaacKuo · 07-29-2017, 10:51 AM

My experience is that Debian 9 does not need alsa at all, just pulseaudio works well. You can use the following to determine what packages to remove to remove alsa:

Code:

dpkg -l | grep alsa

It may look like this:

Code:

ii  alsa-utils                            1.1.3-1                           amd64        Utilities for configuring and using ALSA
ii  gstreamer1.0-alsa:amd64               1.10.4-1                          amd64        GStreamer plugin for ALSA

To get rid of alsa, you can use something like:

Code:

apt-get remove --purge alsa-utils
apt-get autoremove --purge

I don't know if this will help, but if it doesn't help you can always just use apt-get to reinstall alsa-utils to get back to where you were.

aus9 · 07-29-2017, 07:26 PM

@ IsaacKuo

Quote:

My experience is that Debian 9 does not need alsa at all

So can I assume you have actual experience of no Alsa installed and still have sound?

that might sound rude but looking at your package list, you appear to have it installed.

IsaacKuo · 07-29-2017, 07:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aus9

@ IsaacKuo

So can I assume you have actual experience of no Alsa installed and still have sound?

that might sound rude but looking at your package list, you appear to have it installed.

Yes. I took that package list from a new install I just did with a full XFCE4 desktop default. This is much heavier than the normal minimal installs I do. The result of "dpkg -l | grep alsa" is simply empty on most of my computers, like the one I'm typing on right now.

With my RAMBOOT technique, I keep things lean and mean to reduce the size of / (it's copied entirely into RAM, so the smaller the better). If you just install XFCE4 - NOT the full desktop suite - then it will indeed install pulseaudio but it will NOT install alsa.

I can confirm that audio works with playing videos, mp3s, web sites (including YouTube, Netflix), etc... all with only pulseaudio and without alsa.

IsaacKuo · 07-29-2017, 07:44 PM

To be honest, I'm not sure whether or not alsa is necessary for Debian 8. I just accidentally discovered it with Debian 9 when I noticed the minimal XFCE4 install did not include alsa and audio worked anyway.

The audio volume control button I used in Debian 8 (with XFCE4) used alsa, so I had always ended up installing alsa before. It also had this really annoying bug where mousewheeling the volume all the way down would mute the audio, but mousewheeling back up would not unmute it. As I understand it, this was due to some sort of incompatibility between alsa and pulseaudio or something. Anyway, Debian 9's version of XFCE4 includes a pulseaudio control which does not suffer from that annoying bug.

aus9 · 07-30-2017, 01:52 AM

interesting, I can't delete alsa-utils as its a dependency of my desktop.

for that build, do you have libasound2 installed
https://packages.debian.org/stretch/...ound2/filelist

or did "autoremove" delete that too?

PS not sure if I have lost the confidence of OP,

IsaacKuo · 07-30-2017, 02:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aus9

interesting, I can't delete alsa-utils as its a dependency of my desktop.

for that build, do you have libasound2 installed
https://packages.debian.org/stretch/...ound2/filelist

or did "autoremove" delete that too?

PS not sure if I have lost the confidence of OP,

Yes, it is installed. Here's what I get for "dpkg -l | grep libasound":

Code:

ii  libasound2:amd64                     1.1.3-5                           amd64        shared library for ALSA applications
ii  libasound2-data                      1.1.3-5                           all          Configuration files and profiles for ALSA drivers
ii  libasound2-plugins:amd64             1:1.1.4-dmo1                      amd64        ALSA library additional plugins

So I guess I was wrong? I mean, my usage of "grep alsa" failed to match these because grep is case sensitive by default. It didn't catch ALSA as a match.

aus9 · 07-30-2017, 07:33 AM

well all is not lost, as I said I can't remove alsa-utils, if you are able to remove libasound* and still play sound that would be very cool.

I always thought PA was a front end to alsa or OSS so I had my suss meter working but hey I am an oldie

cheers

Wario. · 07-30-2017, 03:41 PM

My apologies for my being in late, and of course thanks to everybody for the conversation :-)
Hoping not to sound impolite, I would like to let you know that I will temporary move for one month to another place, where is it likely that I will no need to use my old Acer One (and I will probably not have time for testing-stuff).
Do you mind if we tried to continue in September? (strongly hoping not to abuse of your patience / violate any forum rule) :-)

Thanks in advance!!!

aus9 · 07-30-2017, 07:24 PM

yeah not a problem for me can't speak for Isaac
when you get back, post a reply that so far still distortion and it exists for various file formats
we can then advise if you need to install gstreamer codec support or install a better media player that can handle various things.
since I don't know what timezone Nintendoland has....send me a pm after reply and I can check