Spent the better part of a day searching for an answer to this little issue, and even recompiled the kernel, but alas, I am stumped.

I just installed Gentoo on my box. I've got it pretty well tame, but I just can't get sound to work.

I followed the Gentoo HOWTO to the letter (I thought) and everything loads, everything seems to work but there's just no sound.

Here's lsmod:

snd_pcm_oss 49184 0
snd_mixer_oss 17920 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_oss 32640 0
snd_seq_midi_event 6912 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 50512 4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 7820 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
pcspkr 3588 0
skge 35856 0
snd_intel8x0 30492 0
snd_ac97_codec 92448 1 snd_intel8x0
snd_ac97_bus 2944 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm 81540 3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec
snd_timer 22276 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd 47460 9 snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd _timer
snd_page_alloc 9352 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
sk98lin 167776 0


And here's /proc
0 [ICH5 ]: ICH4 - Intel ICH5
Intel ICH5 with AD1985 at 0xfebff800, irq 21

Sound Driver:3.8.1a-980706 (ALSA v1.0.11rc2 emulation code)
Kernel: Linux Gentoo 2.6.16 #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Mar 21 10:00:39 EST 2006 i686
Config options: 0

Installed drivers:
Type 10: ALSA emulation

Card config:
Intel ICH5 with AD1985 at 0xfebff800, irq 21

Audio devices:
0: Intel ICH5 (DUPLEX)

Synth devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Midi devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Timers:
7: system timer

Mixers:
0: Analog Devices AD1985

I have unmuted EVERYTHING that could possibly be unmuted, Kmix, alsamixer, run alsaconf a hundred thousand times, and even tried changing permissions in the /dev folder for respective devices. (I am in the audio group).

What's strange is when I turn on the sound server control application (that little thing in KDE), I can actually SEE the sounds playing, but not hear them. I have even tried moving my speaker jack to different locations on my sound card (an onboard Intel 810, if you hadn't guessed). I have tried disabling artsd, but that had no effect either.

Any ideas? Anything really glaringly obvious I'm missing? I'm sort of a newb. Real newb with gentoo.

shoe

Well, the first "obvious" thing to check is that the software that's playing the sounds has been set to use ALSA. You could also check to make sure no application has rudely grabbed hold of the sound devices and stopped anything else working (Try lsof /dev/dsp IIRC)

I've also had issues in the past where a sound device wouldn't work until I *did* mute a channel - some sort of conflit between two channels, I assume. You could try muting all but the bare essentials.

Thank you thank you thank you. It was driving me nuts! Muting everything but Master, PCM, PC Speaker and CD did the trick.

Much appreciated! I probably never would have thought of that.

take care
shoe