No sound with newly installed Creative X-Fi card
 

Hi all, I've installed a PCI soundcard, where previously I was using onboard sound only, and can get no sound out of it at all. I've checked the things I know how to check and have run out of ways to address the problem. The card is Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic (SB0460), the driver (snd_ctxfi) is loaded on boot, the card seems recognised e.g. in alsamixer. I have now installed qjackctl as recommended by some advice articles I have checked on the web, but can't immediately see if it would help me. Any advice appreciated.

Extract from /var/log/dmesg:

[ 4.633377] ACPI: resource nForce2_smbus [io 0x0600-0x063f] conflicts with ACPI region SMRG [io 0x600-0x6ff]
[ 4.633380] ACPI: If an ACPI driver is available for this device, you should use it instead of the native driver
[ 4.633384] ACPI: resource nForce2_smbus [io 0x0700-0x073f] conflicts with ACPI region SM00 [io 0x700-0x73f]
[ 4.633386] ACPI: If an ACPI driver is available for this device, you should use it instead of the native driver
[ 4.660422] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] enabled at IRQ 16
[ 4.660438] snd_ctxfi 0000:01:07.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKB] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
[ 4.667083] Error: Driver 'pcspkr' is already registered, aborting...
[ 4.774338] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[ 4.863735] wmi: Mapper loaded
[ 4.957587] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:07.0: power state changed by ACPI to D0
[ 4.957590] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:07.0: power state changed by ACPI to D0
[ 4.957730] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LAZA] enabled at IRQ 21
[ 4.957733] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:07.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LAZA] -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
[ 4.957735] hda_intel: Disabling MSI
[ 4.957753] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:07.0: setting latency timer to 64


I'm running Debian wheezy, the kernel is compiled by me but from stock source, no tweaks. Sound output from the motherboard (Asus M4N78) onboard sound worked OK but I wanted something better quality.

#uname -a
Linux hostname 3.2.15-1-amd64 #1 SMP Sat Apr 28 19:03:26 BST 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux

#lspci
00:00.0 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] Memory Controller (rev a2)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] LPC Bridge (rev a2)
00:01.1 SMBus: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] SMBus (rev a1)
00:01.2 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:01.3 Co-processor: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] Co-Processor (rev a2)
00:01.4 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:02.0 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a1)
00:02.1 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a1)
00:04.0 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a1)
00:04.1 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a1)
00:06.0 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] IDE (rev a1)
00:07.0 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation MCP72XE/MCP72P/MCP78U/MCP78S High Definition Audio (rev a1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Bridge (rev a1)
00:09.0 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] SATA Controller (non-AHCI mode) (rev a2)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP77 Ethernet (rev a2)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:12.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:13.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Bridge (rev a1)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor HyperTransport Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor Miscellaneous Control
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor Link Control
01:07.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB X-Fi
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G86 [GeForce 8400 GS] (rev a1)

Have you tried the alsaunmute command?

I don't seem to have the alsaunmute command - I have alsa-tools and alsa-utils installed, should it be part of one of those? But I did check in alsamixer that the channels are not muted.

BUT - the problem is partially solved since I posted. I tried using aplay to play WAVs from the command line and can get sound by specifying the device and options.

I have also installed jackd sound server and can play audio CDs. But I have no sound in Firefox for example. I notice there is another questioner asking about a problem which may be similar http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ey-4175433248/

on my systems, it comes with the alsa-utils package.
that should be sufficient. FYI, alsaunmute is just a shell script, it seems, containing this:
Do you by chance have pulseaudio installed? I have mixed experience w/it, but when I am using GNOME, I usually need to have that running to get sound working with apps (vs just the command line).

Hi, no pulseaudio isn't installed, but I did install JACK which I believe is an alternative - both are sound servers. And that helped solve the problem. I've got sound working now. I needed to change settings in ~/.asoundrc.asoundconf

In case it's useful for anyone else reading this, I'll explain some more about the problem and the solution. I'm running Debian wheezy, but because I'm quite particular about desktop environments I only ever install a base system and work with a fairly bare setup. I run the window manager i3 and very little in the way of desktop utilities - no panels or anything. Just the way I like it. But it does mean my life gets harder when I choose to mess around with my hardware, I guess.

By installing a PCI card on top of onboard sound, I ended up with two sound devices, of which one should be the default. When I ran test sounds at the command line (using aplay) I could hear them, and similarly when I started the jackd server I could specify the device on the command line, and sound came through loud and clear. But Iceweasel (== Firefox) along with other apps had its own idea of which card to use (i.e. they stuck to the old default).

The default setting comes from two config files in my home directory called .asoundrc and .asoundrc.asoundconf. The .asoundrc.asoundconf file begins with a warning not to edit it, so initially I did not.
It starts like this:

# ALSA library configuration file managed by asoundconf(1).
#
# MANUAL CHANGES TO THIS FILE WILL BE OVERWRITTEN!
#
# Manual changes to the ALSA library configuration should be implemented
# by editing the ~/.asoundrc file, not by editing this file.
!defaults.pcm.card NVidia
defaults.ctl.card NVidia
defaults.pcm.device 0

But when I checked I found there isn't any asoundconf installed and I can't find a package for it in the repository. So where this config file has come from I don't know. Anyway, I decided to change it and see what happened. If it got overwritten I could try using .asoundrc instead. But in fact simply ignoring the warning and altering NVidia to XFi in the above example worked fine. I've got music in my ears now.

Thanks for advising,