To start, I'm not a newbie by any means.. This problem just has me licked. Here's the run-down:

Running a 2.0 Pentium 4, Redhat 8, with both a Soundblaster Live! card and integrated sound: "Silicon Integrated Sound". The integrated sound can be shut off in bios, so that's how I run it. All sound goes through the SB. So I'm playing mp3s in XMMS, then pop in a cd. Play the cd in KsCD, then load the tracks into XMMS so I can use the equalizer. CD plays just fine. I go back to playing an mp3.. no sound. The visualization shows me sound, but I hear nothing.

Chromium won't play sound, and when I go into "Soundcard detection" and hit "play test sound", I get nothing. Speakers are connected and on, blahblahblah. I did NOTHING between playing the CD and trying the mp3. I rebooted, still no luck, went into bios and tuned integrated sound on, plugged my speakers in there... still no luck. In Soundcard detection both cards showed up, but the test on either card produced no sound.

Any help anyone could offer would be appreciated. I am LOST on this one. CD played fine, I immediately stopped it from playing and hit an mp3, and it didn't play. No time at all.

Help!
Tom

many possibilities are there
first did you checked your volume level with aumix or any mixer
next what does
cat /dev/dsp
cat /dev/sndstat
cat /dev/audio outputs
get any file(i repeat any file) say x
do
x > /dev/dsp
does it produce any sound

Do you have the mp3 plug-in installed for xmms? It isn't installed by default in RH8.0 up.

Yeah, mp3 plugin is installed.. had no problem playing mp3s before the CD.

<embarassed>I went into aumix, and the Pcm was clear down.. Don't I feel like a dumbass ;-). Newbie moment.</embarassed>

So my sound is fixed, but I'm still very confused as to why it would have changed itself like that. Oh well, at least I can play the Matrix Reloaded soundtrack!

Thanks a million for your help, rch!

Many had come to come to ask to check their soundcards and most cases it turns out volume not checked,plug to line-out connector connected to line-in etc.So I understand.
And I don't think that you will face the same problem again :-)
I was hoping to watch the Matrix Reloaded but it has not arrived here yet.Incidentally how's the soundtrack?

Perhaps it was an alsa driver update? It defaults to muted when installed/updated.

Fancypiper: That was my first thought, that the alsa updater switched my drivers. The I realized I didn't even have alsa . I used it on an old distro, but sound worked from the start with RH8.

rsh: If you watch the movie, the soundtrack is amazing. However, it seems that you can't grab any of the really good songs off of the internet. Still looking . . the fight scene music is the best.

I have a twist on this problem. I also had my sound working on RedHat 8 (after many problems folowing my upgrade from 7.3). I have i810 audio with AC97. For some reason it just stopped working. Aumix checked, volume up. XMMS has MP3 support. dmesg output seems ok except for line:
ac97 codec does not have proper volume support. I don't understand this one. redhat-config-soundcard correctly identifies my card but wont play a test sound. SIS7012 PCI audio accelerator, i810_audio.

I'm stumped, any help gratefully received.

Thanks

Hmmm.......

Did you install or change anything prior to the sound not working?
It doesn't seem like an error that would happen without some sort of config change.

slight

If I have the sound card right, it's on-board sound. I had a similar problem awhile back . . Here's a simple way to fix it.

Reboot, get into your BIOS and look for your "Integrated Peripherals" (At least that's what my BIOS called them ). Disable your sound module, save, and boot RH8. When Kudzu throws a fit and says it can't find your sound, tell it to uninstall. Finish booting, then start over and reverse it all. Go into BIOS, turn sound back on, let Kudzu put it in, get a fresh install. *Hopefully* This will fix it for you.. it worked for me!

~MagicTom

Hi, thanks for the sugestions.

I haven't changed any configs or installed anything that caused the sound to stop. I tried the bios thing (it is onboard sound) and the system uninstalled and then correctly detected and reinstalled the sound card but it still doesn't make any noise.

Thinking about it, it seems to have started about the time I set up a second user account.

I have always had to kill artds before I could get XMMS to play anything without generating an error (it seems to grab the sound card and not let it go or something). XMMS still runs and 'plays' mp3's, it just doesnt make any noise. (I know it's not the speakers because sound still works under winsuck.)

Instead of killing artsd change your kde config so that artsd doesnot start along with kde.I think you can do it through preferences->sound.Now your problem may be becoz of the mixer thing.Try cat /dev/mixerX and tell me the output.You may have to do mknod.Incidentally what is the output of aumix.

Thanks for your help rch.

I changed the KDE startup to stop arts running.

I tried: cat /dev/mixerX (as user and root) but only got
cat: /dev/mixerX: no such file or directory. Looking in dev there is no mixerX
but there are mixer and mixer1. Running the same command on each of these
produces
cat: /dev/mixer: Invalid argument
cat: /dev/mixer1: No such device

I don't know how to use the mknod command and the help wasn't much since I don't know anything about the options.

The output from aumix shows all settings up, except the mic which is always down. Going to Preferences->Sound->mixer results in the program trying to run but timing out. Running kmix from shell starts it though it looks just like the windows volume control and doesn't seem to do much more.

When I wrote /dev/mixerX I meant anyone of /dev/mixer /dev/mixer1 2 etc.
Your i810 mixer is being detected as /dev/mixer is working.
You can try aumix(I don't know much about kmix or gmix) and check every settings particularly pcm and pcm2(yours a i810 ac97 audio).Increase the volume or slider of each of the two along with
volume one.See if it works or if it outputs something like this:
segmentation fault:core dumped.

Thanks.

I checked the different settings in aumix and none produce any sort of problem such as a seg fault.