edit: Sorry, I forgot to note the OS version before I clicked 'post'. I also added more info.

Ubuntu 12.04 lts precise.

My EMU1212m sound card has stopped working, after a long hiatus where the machine was awaiting hard disk replacement.

I dd'd the original OS to the new booting partition on the new disk. Everything else seems to be working fine.

Now the EMU1212m spdif function is totally missing from pulseaudio, both on the input and output. The analog input and output is still there but I did not test it to see if it still works (really don't care at this time).

Alsamixer has lots of apparently new controls for the EMU1212m since I last checked, including spdif controls. They are confusing and none of them seem to make any difference.

Anyway, with pulse not seeing the spdif I have no way of directing the applications' output toward the EMU1212m. Audacity seems to still be aware of the 1212m but I have not tried to use it yet and have no idea how to test spdif without the help of pulse.

The new qashctl has much more functionality than I remember but none of it will start up the spdif and it is TOTALLY confusing. It sort of looks like some of the original Windows i/o patching is now implemented and it just as cryptic as Jack to me (never got Jack working either).

Qashctl also puts 'elements of the type iec958 are not supported' in the middle panel when I select iec958 in the left panel.

The MB built-in spdif is working, but it is optical and stereo only. The built-in spdif works when either its spdif or its analog stereo output are selected in pulse. Do not care about MB analog at this time.

I did not check the EMU until after I updated the OS on the new disk. I suspect it was working until I did the OS update with Synaptic but I cannot prove it without un/redoing lots of work.

The one thing I notice (with my patchy troubleshooting skills) is that Medibuntu is closed down and alsa-firmware is apparently missing from ubuntu-restricted-extras, according to the list of packages inside it that I found somewhere on the Ubuntu web site. Of course, that information may have been wrong, but alsa-firmware is not listed in synaptic anywhere either, not even in the descriptive panel for ubuntu-restricted-extras.

I have not installed ubuntu-restricted-extras. I originally installed the dvd control package and libdvdcss2 directly using an apt command that was buried inside a readme somewhere in the OS. It was referenced somewhere in a Synaptic description panel and that is how I found it. I prefer not to install ubuntu-restricted-extras at this time if it will not fix the problem anyway and without alsa-firmware it seems it will not fix it. (not interested in changing too many things at once).

I suspect that the problem is my updated kernel or more likely, my updated pulse is incompatible with the alsa-firmware that is installed and, being missing from the official ubuntu-restricted-extras package, synaptic is not updating alsa-firmware either, in fact it cannot even detect the currently installed version.

My original alsa-firmware build directory is
/home1/drivers/sound/emu1212m/alsa-firmware-1.0.23/emu

and the installed firmware is
/lib/firmware/emu/audio_dock.fw
/lib/firmware/emu/emu0404.fw
/lib/firmware/emu/emu1010b.fw
/lib/firmware/emu/emu1010_notebook.fw
/lib/firmware/emu/hana.fw
/lib/firmware/emu/micro_dock.fw

I suspect that when I updated the kernel and pulse, that is when the spdif vanished from pulse.

Does anyone have a suggestion how to fix this? I tried going to the alsa web site and found several versions of alsa-firmware. Which should I try to install?

Or did I miss something? Should I be looking at something else?

Everything I find online indicates to either install Medibuntu from PPA (not comfortable doing that because some posts say it is compromised) or installing alsa-firmware from a tarball (not comfortable doing that because I do not know which version to use and some posts say installing multiple versions causes problems). Am I supposed to un-install it before installing a new version? How? Which one?

Do I simply delete the firmware files and copy the new ones in after a build? Or is there a different problem entirely? Not sure where to go from here.

Sorry, I have no idea which commands to run from terminal to troubleshoot this. I never really did anything fancy with sound.

Thanks for any help. Going to try yet more google searches in the meanwhile.

Maybe I will also try to build the latest alsa-firmware from scratch. As far as I can tell, all I have to do is move the original emu directory out of the way and copy the new firmware to the replacement emu directory? Hoping the build does not write to other areas of the OS in the process...

I found the following in the README of 1.0.28 alsa-firmware. It means nothing to me, beyond the definition of 'hotplug'.

It does appear that even the firmware wants to be built. There seem to be only headers. There is both a make and an install script. I guess the next step is to try and decipher them.

My primary concern is running an install script that might corrupt the existing installation. Even though it is already broken I would rather not make the mess any worse.

It looks like I might need to tell it not to install the hotplug firmware.

I forgot how to specify emu to the builder. I will keep looking.

HOTPLUG FIRMWARE LOADER SUPPORT
===============================

The recent ALSA driver supports the hotplug firmware loader.
As default, the package will install firmware data to the places for
both the old ALSA fw loader and the hotplug fw loader. To disable
the installation of old ALSA fw loader data (if both ALSA and hotplug
fw loaders are available), pass --disable-loader to configure.
Similarly, to disable the hotplug fw loader data, pass
--disable-hotplug option.

For the old ALSA fw loader, specify the same prefix option given to
the alsa-tools configure script, too, in order to keep the
installation directories consistent.

The default directory for hotplug firmware data files is /lib/firmware.
(or if existing /lib/hotplug/firmware or /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware are
found they are used)
You can change to another path via --with-hotplug-dir option.

This thread explains something similar but I am not sure I understand it all. It looks like the other one of my machines has qmmp and vlc etc working in surround sound through spdif with the 'exclusive access' model, but that one was recently installed 12.04 precise lts.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1608804&page=9

In contrast, this machine with the 1212m was installed when 12.04 first came out and went offline over a year ago. The sound seems to be working in the 'shared access' mode and spdif is exclusively stereo on the Intel chip, whereas the emu spdif does not appear in pulseaudio settings panel at all.

Actually, come to think of it, I am not sure I ever got spdif going on the 1212m. I did not have a digital receiver before this machine stopped working so I would have had no reason to use it!

Hm. Maybe I just never noticed that spdif was missing all along.

Your thoughts?

From the bug report in the prior mentioned link, I find:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/972554

Reported by Simon Déziel on 2012-04-03

"...The new sound settings attempts to figure out if there is a choice for the user and if so only present those profiles in the combo for that device. The need to expose the card has been made redundant in favour of exposing the card ports. This means now the user can swap to the HDMI 'port' without having to change profile on the card tab like before. It will hopefully greatly simplify the usage of sound devices..."

"...Unfortunately, the new design is hiding something I used to rely on. The sound card in question, an E-MU 404 USB, also offers many profiles and one of them is "Digital Surround Output 4.0 + IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output "... This profile is not shown in the new design where the card only shows 2 other profiles that are not compatible with my setup since I need S/PDIF output..."

"...I have taken a deeper look at the pactl list you submitted in comment #28 and just realized the problem is more complex than expected.

I thought the problem was related to not being able to select the right combination of input and output, that the output was changed when you changed input and vice versa.
In your case, you don't have any output ports at all for the profile you want to select. Fixing that would require some more work, and I'll try to fix that if/when I get around to digging deep into that code again. So; I'm marking it as Triaged for now..."

It appears the patient may have already bled to death.

I take it this means I am SOL.

Any potential workarounds to this short of extracting pulseaudio completely? Or should I call it and bury the emu1212m?

I was hoping to use it for digital 7.1 over coax since my receiver is one of those that seems to have hdmi reliability issues.

Well more flakiness is in evidence.

While trying to select different audio outputs in pulseaudio sound settings, I noticed that every time I tried to select the top (spdif internal) it would jump down to the bottom (analog 1212m) after selecting it in the drop-down form on the right side.

Then I think I might have closed qashctl and it started working ok?

So I went into VLC and told it to use alsa sound module instead of default (pulse). Suddenly I get 5.1 out of the internal optical instead of stereo.

So I tried playing around again in quashctl and alsamixer to see if I can get the emu1212m spdif going too. Suddenly the internal spdif is dead and when VLC starts it pops up with this message:

Audio output failed:
The audio device "iec958:AES0=0x2,AES1=0x82,AES2=0x0,AES3=0x2" could not be used:
No such file or directory.

I tried playing around with it for a few minutes but the internal spdif is totally dead now.

I am baffled by this strange behavior in the sound modules.

Is there a global reset script or function that will restore the default profiles and settings? I thought not.

OK, any ideas at all, anyone?

After reboot now I can still see VLC pumping away in pavucontrol in the 'play' tab, but in the 'output' tab, the internal spdif is not getting stimulated on its vu bar anymore.

Things keep changing their behavior. This is weird.

EDIT: It appears I was mistaken. The SPDIF output vu bar was scrolled off the screen. I did not realize it had that capability (I just installed it after reading the bug report).

I am going through the Ubuntu sound troubleshooting procedure. Not so thrilled about the prospect of re-installing Unity desktop to fix a sound problem. I thought that was a Windows sort of trick!

I will save the tactics that reinstall software for last. Recursively removing the ~/.pulse* did nothing.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/So...otingProcedure

bash alsa-info.sh --stdout

After upgrading ALSA and rebooting the computer make sure that the ALSA library version and utilities version are exactly the same version number.

The Terminal output after running the ALSA information script should contain something like this:

# ALSA Version

# Driver version: 1.0.25 (if you are running Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS (Precise Pangolin))

# Library version: 1.0.25 (if you are running Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS (Precise Pangolin))

# Utilities version: 1.0.25 (if you are running Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS (Precise Pangolin))

If the Library and Utilities version numbers are not equal, this is probably due to one or more of the following issues:

1. One of the ALSA components was not successfully upgraded during step 1 in this procedure

2. ALSA was correctly installed or upgraded, but a wrong / old kernel was booted instead of the most recent kernel version. In that case, boot the newest kernel version (that is available in the standard/default Ubuntu repositories) and then retest sound.

My output from alsa-info.sh script:

!!ALSA Version
!!------------

Driver version: 1.0.24
Library version: 1.0.25
Utilities version: 1.0.25

note: I did NOT perform the Upgrade and Reboot prior to running the alsa-info.sh script

so it appears that the alsa driver failed to upgrade to the same version as the library and utilitities. Perhaps this has something to do with the problem. They do not match each other.

uname -r
3.2.0-69-generic

Not sure exactly what the issue is, but apparently I have to reinstall the alsa driver to fix at least one problem.

Synaptic says:

alsa-base
1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu1.1
linux-sound-base
1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu1.1

libasound2
1.0.25-1ubuntu10.2
libasound2:i386
1.0.25-1ubuntu10.2
libasound2-plugins
1.0.25-1ubuntu1

alsa-utils
1.0.25-1ubuntu5.2
alsa-tools
1.0.25-1ubuntu1

Since the versions reported by alsa-info.sh and synaptic do not match, it seems there is some basic issue in the initialization. Something might be corrupted.

Re-installed alsa-base and linux-sound-base from synaptic with no change.

Now that I look at this link I see maybe the alsa driver is actually part of the kernel. That might explain why it did not update. Apparently in 12.04 the driver version stopped at 1.0.24 while the associated libraries and utilities continued updating to 1.0.25. Is this a problem or not?

I really do not understand this stuff!

http://askubuntu.com/questions/16987...iver-to-1-0-25

"...It has the IDT 92HD99 sound card. Support for this was added to ALSA 1.0.25 based on this changelog:

http://www.alsa-project.org/main/ind...25&action=edit

However the ALSA driver version in Ubuntu 12.04 is 1.0.24. Can someone explain how to update the ALSA driver to 1.0.25? The alsa-base package says it's using a package version 1.0.25-dfsg-0ubuntu1.

Here is my ALSA version info:

!!ALSA Version !!------------

Driver version: 1.0.24 Library version: 1.0.25 Utilities version: 1.0.25

I think I need to get that "Driver version" up to 1.0.25 to get support for my hardware. Any help? Thanks."

"Yes, Ubuntu precise LTS is having the ALSA version of 1.0.24. You can look at the below link, where the upgrade script has been attached. I have tried on the AMD's new SI products and it worked well.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1681577"

The update script at that page says it is a poor way to upgrade and recommends against using it. Anyway it looks scary.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/UpgradingAlsa/DKMS

"Following these instructions will give you the latest ALSA driver, but only for internal "HDA Intel" sound cards (if your computer is from 2005 or newer, you almost certainly have a "HDA Intel" sound card for handling internal speakers, headphone jacks and microphones). USB or Bluetooth sound will not be affected."

So there is a kernel patch that automatically rebuilds itself with every kernel upgrade, but it only works for Intel sound.

This is starting to look... like I should just either upgrade to 14.04 or find a different sound device to use, or both.

I am going to try re-installing 12.04 to another partition and see if the sound card works. Maybe a fresh install will help. I have spdif working OK on another machine from two different sound devices with the same OS as this one with the emu1212m.

Well, I finally deduced the following:

The internal sound card is particular about the settings for surround through spdif. Only one setting in VLC works, through the ALSA sound device, with one particular profile. 'Use spdif when available' has to be checked. Spdif also turns on when analog device is used in stereo mode.

The emu1212m will play in stereo through the spdif apparently, when selected via ALSA in VLC, and it does not seem to make any difference which device is selected unless it is the IEC958 spdif profile, in which case it throws a 'file not found' error. When 'use spdif when available' is checked, the spdif coax output sends a stream of digital noise, regardless of which profile is selected.

A new OS installation with an upgraded firmware for the 1212m made no difference whatsoever to the result. Alsa driver is still one revision behind the library of course. Maybe that is the reason for the issue. Maybe the spdif direct pass-through profile is missing or corrupt or never completed and the only part that is working is the downmix. Maybe it is in some sort of ADAT 8-channel audio mixing board format that is not compatible with spdif. I am not willing to spend any more time debugging it on my own with no help and I cannot see any simple way of contacting Alsa for help.

The emu1212m is not going to do surround on this system unless somehow this problem is debugged. It will have to suffice for stereo analog capture transcribing my vinyl.

I guess I will have to find a way to make HDMI work when the graphics card arrives. It is the only way to get 7.1 out of this system.

I can play 5.1 via the internal optical spdif with VLC and QMMP using the alsa output device. Movie player (based on mplayer) is doing stereo only and I do not use it often enough to figure out surround on it.

That will have to do until the graphics is completed.

I wish I could have at least marked the thread solved, but the end result is it just ain't workin'.

http://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/mai...3E_ALSA_plugin

shows that the difference between 1.0.24 v 1.0.25 alsa plugin:

" PulseAudio -> ALSA plugin

Added missing configuration files for the pulse plugin
Set CLOEXEC flag for pipes in PulseAudio plugins
pulse: Install a PulseAudio config snippet into alsa.conf.d
pulse - Define a dummy PA_CHECK_VERSION() when not available
pulse - only underrun if no more data has been written
pulse: Set PA_CONTEXT_NOAUTOSPAWN when fallback is available
pulse: Add fallback option
Pulse: Fix snd_pcm_avail returning 0 in some cases"

so it seems that some of the symptoms I am seeing might well be due to this particular plugin being one revision back, if it comes along for the ride with the driver.

Well, I am not going to do a temporary module compilation just to get alsa updated. That is just too much work and fixing it permanently is not in my league. Maybe when I upgrade to 14.04 lts this problem will be fixed.

I tried a Geforce 210 HDMI. The output is the same as the internal SPDIF, literally. When HDMI turns on SPDIF runs the same thing out through ALSA and the HDMI is limited to SPDIF performance.