Sound Card Recognized....Still No Sound
 

Hi, Again!

I just installed an old ES1938 Solo-1 soundcard, as my onboard sound was messed up. Debian recognizes the sound card....but there is no sound (At least I had some sound with mt messed-up onboard config!)

I disabled the onboard sound in the bios..

Opened Alsamixer...volume is set at 100.....

What else can I do to try and get the sound working?

Make sure output channels are not muted.

Hmm...how would i do that, please?

In alsamixer, a muted channel shows MM at the bottom (instead of OO). Pressing m toggles it.

Ah, O-K...thanks.

The only thing showing as muter is "3D cntrl".....

Any other ideas?

I'm beginning to think that this sound card is defective....'cause everything else seems to check-out O-K. I've ordered a nedw one.....

If you have pulse audio, you could install and try pavucontrol, its like alsa mixer but on my system, at least, it has options and device settings that alsamixer lacks.

Thanks. I don't believe my Debian has Pulse...but I know that my old Ubuntu does...so maybe I'll boot-up Ubuntu and give that a try!

Ah well...that didn't work..... Same deal; It recognizes the card....but still no sound.

I forgot to hook up the wire from the CD/DVD drive when I installed the card...but that would only affect media I was trying to play from the drive, right? (I'll hook it up later, just for the heck of it...)

Anyone see anything wrong with this aplay -l output:

Or this lspci -v:

It's obviously seeing the sound card ,and loading the driver....

What can the problem be, besides a bad card?

Hi

I like images pls post an image of
if you don't have your own host site consider tinypic.com or http://imagebin.org/index.php?page=add
eg 14 day expiry at link http://imagebin.org/271938

2) Have you read http://www.alsa-project.org/main/ind...:Module-es1938

so post the contents of
3) Can you just mention that your syslog has no mention of your onboard---no need for posting log at this stage
---its smart to disable it while testing your pc card snd but it can interfere, pesky things they are.

but we don't know if interference from other IRQs so post this output pls
good luck

Hello, Aus9,

Thank you for taking the time to do this- Being a noob, this is really what I need- someone to walk me through this.

Here is the output of alsamixer -c0 -Vall:

http://oi44.tinypic.com/5x3ejn.jpg

(I un-muted the 3Dcntrl...just in case...but it made no difference)

2)- No, I haven't read that particular piece. Hadn't found it yet (Not for lack of Googling, though!)


Here is the output of modinfo snd:
3)I've tried it with the onboard sound disabled and in "auto" through the BIOS...no difference. (Funny thing is: I used to have some sound through the onboard sound...now if i enable it and plug the speakers in to it, I have NO sound, even through that! )

...and finally:

Any ideas?

Thanks again!

Hi

thanks for image

2) Your soundcard has not been shared with other devices so no interrupt interference which eliminates that issue

3) but I can't see any sound inputs in your [all] image pls post the contents of
and thanks for aplay -l above.

4) I have to go out but maybe this device needs a quirk setting or something,
will research later

ok some quick research on your card shows
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documenta...figuration.txt

but to be sure can you post the output of this command pls

alternatively you could tryt OSS for sound instead of ALSA?

debian sid has oss4-gtk which should pull down oss4-base but the first package is a gui or graphical panel that should suit newbies?

O-K...here we go:

:o




Not sure thatI quite understand that.....but the ALSA system did work.... What happened was, my onboard sound went bad one day, when I was still using Ubuntu (The volume, even when turned to max on both the computer and the speakers, was very low....and low frequencies were weak and distorted, like when you have a blown speaker. I checked out my speakers, and the cable, etc. they were fine.

At the time, I still had Windows Vista on my hard-drive, so I booted it up...same thing. And then when I wiped the Vista and installed Debian...same thing, with the onboard sound- so I bought this PCI sound card...and now NO sound at all from Debian or Ubuntu....which leads me to believe the card is bad. What'ya think?

I really appreciate the time and trouble you're taking to help!

aaahhh why did you not tell us you were using pulseaudio before?
did you not know you had it running?

I suggest you now ensure you have all the configs for it
come back when you have installed all and we re-look at whatever you have for pulseaudio (=PA)

now the other thing is possible hardware failure

please confirm that sound is working or not in windos pls

If no sound working, boot up a live cd/dvd such as Linux mint and confirm you get sound or not
---you may need to use alsamixer/gui mixer to unmute and raise volumes

If you have blown speakers we are wasting time no?

I have PulseAudio?! :o
(Did I mention that I'm a clueless noob?)

I no longer have WinD'ohs on the 'puter...just Ubuntu 10.04 and Debian- and now there's no sound in either. (The onboard sound worked fine in Ubuntu until recently, then it started only half-working as described above- and that had to be a hardware issue, because it did the same in Ubuntu and Windows...and then Debian. Then I installed the PCI card to "fix" that problem, and no sound...from any OS.)

No...LOL...speakers are not blown. They sound fine if I hook up my MP3 player through the auxilary input, or even through the jack used for the computer cable.

Do we really have to mess with the Pulseaudio? ALSA worked fine before...I was thinking maybe it would be better to just stick with one system? Could it be that the output of something is set to use PulseAudio, while the output of something else is trying to use ALSA?

Hopefully my new new sound card will arrive soon, and we can eliminate a defective sound card as an issue......

I have an old live CD of some distro (I think it is Mint) lying around here, somewhere...I'll find it and give it a whirl, as you suggest, some time today.

You should be getting paid for this!

PS: I had already tried that pavucontrol thing on my Ubuntu...no difference.

Since I do have updated Pulse on my Ubuntu, if you prefer to work with that, maybe I can boot into Ubuntu for the pulse stuff...and stay with ALSA on Debian, so we don't start confusing things? (I'll be wiping the Ubuntu in the future, so I don't mind experimenting with it).

suits me, join the ubuntu forum to ask questions about pulseaudio (LQ or the real forum) as you see fit
I will assume you will now delete all pulseaudio from debian,
some may not be installed so you may need to do each package by its self YMMV

then do a full reboot

then post the contents of aplay -l and aplay -L----when you have no pulse showing pls

Hello, Again...

Now something weird is happening: I pasted your commands in (after editing-in the name I use on the computer, of course), and without even hitting ENTER, it just starts running. Gets to the prompt at the bottom, where it asks me if I want to continue; I hit "y" and "enter"...and it aborts...

Here's how it looks:

iy...

My new card came today, and I just installed it- now apparently, the OS isn't recognizing it- it just says "dummy output".

It never ends.....

It can't be the Debian...'cause I get the exact same thing whether I'm using Ubuntu or Debian.

hmmm not sure what Debian you are on so try this instead
we will leave pulse installed as it looks like gnome depends on it.....grrrr

2) Ok now lets use this post to work on your new card
go into your bios pls and disable your onboard sound
look to see if you need to setup your new card

boot up

go into /var/log/messages with a root powered text editor ....as you have gnome
thats likely to be
copy and paste only those bits that relate to any sound hardware

If you can't find any...pls describe your new card
make model pci-card (the kind of slot its in)

Also did you remove your solo card or not?

also with the new card post the contents of
cheers

Aus9, I'll pick up on this in a day or two- I'm so tired of fooling with this at the moment- and have spent so much time doing so, that I need a break!

I re-enabled the onboard sound, and that works somewhat- as it did before, with lower than normal volume- which was the orignal problem which prompted me to get the PCI card [Under 3 different OS's..so THAT had to be a hardware problem] (I right clicked on the volume icon on my toolbar, and was able to set the output volume at 153%....so at last with the speakers turned up the way, it's usable).

I'll go back and re-read this thread- I think you (or possibly someone else) mentioned how to re-install PulseAudio? I notice that in Alsamixer, the PCI card is listed a "PulseAudio"....so when I get back to this, I'll take your earlier advice about the pulse..... (I'm so bleary from this crapola, I hardly know what I'm doing, so forgive me if I'm rehashing....)

Or maybe I'll take the sound card to a PC repair shop and see if they can test it....

Thanks again for all the help.

Hello, All,

I replaced my old Ubuntu with Crunchbang today [So I'm now running Debian and Crunchbang].....same deal in Crunchbang.....no sound through the PCI card; but I can get the onboard audio to partially work.... Gotta be hardware, eh?

umm you did firmly push card into slot eh?

why not try another slot?

You can use masking tape to cover the olde hole if your case has no spare cover pieces.

good luck

Tried that already, Aus.

The card is recognized in either slot...just no sound. It's the first "new" card I'm still working with. The "new" new card that I got to replace it, turned out to have an ES1983 chip, which I've seen from Googling-around, isn't really Linux compatible- which, I guess is why when I had it installed, it wasn't recognized, and just said "dummy output".

So I'm back to the idea of trying ANOTHER card, since the card I bought to replace the potentially defective initial card isn't really compatible.....

In the meantime, I've got sound through the onboard audio- by plugging the speaker's auxilary input into the computer's headphone jack, while keeping the regular computer-to-speaker connection connected also, and boosting the volume in [I think?] the GUI "pavucontrol" to it's max of 153%.

I'll let you know what happens when I do finally get a compatible replacement card..... [The non-compatible replacement card- a generic piece of Chinese junk- didn't sit well in the slot.... I was going to file down the edge of the board below the contacts- as one can see that it is not 100% straight....but no need to bother, since the ES1983 isn't supported....]

Thanks again for sticking with this.

Alsa mixer can cause problems because Alsa must configure it according to what card that Alsa detects. It took years for Alsa to fix their downloads to configure Alsa mixer for my sound cards. I resorted to randomly trying mixer setups for closely related cards and saving the bits that worked.

When you get a mixer config that works, it can be saved and then setup Alsa to load it instead of detecting. There may be more mixer controls than what you see, and if one is set to default then the volume is low.

Installing a different Alsa version with a new set of Alsa mixer configs can be the cause of all your problems. Suspect everything that Alsa is doing. There are some Alsa config tools, but I do not remember their names, and they probably have changed again.

Try
>> man -k Alsa

To verify the pci install
>>lspci

Thanks, Selfprogrammed, but it was doing the same thing even when I booted-up Vista, before wiping it off my HDD- so I'd think it's gotta be a hardware issue, no? And it was working fine in Ubuntu...until one day when it just went bad- and I had made no changes to the system.... Now it's the same on Crunchbang, too.

I just installed my THIRD sound card....I guess three's a charm- Hooked the 'puter back up...tried it out, and now I have SOUND...finally! I KNEW it had to be a hardware issue!

Thanks to everyone for all the help- especially you, Aus9.

Lesson: Don't buy used sound cards on Ebay!!!!!!

Ah! Sound...sound...glorious sound!

Oh dear goodness! Now another problem!

After a few minutes, the sound became intermittent; then stopped altogether. When I opened the volume control [Using Crunchbang as my OS now- it opens pavucontrol when you click on the volume icon ] the sound played normally. When I'd close-out the pavucontrol, the sound would stop again after a few seconds. Open pavucontrol...it worked again...and so forth.

Also, the volume icon is not showing the muted symbol...even though it isn't muted.

This is getting ridiculous! (But at least I know that this sound card is good....)

Anyone?

$ pulseaudio --kill

$ pulseaudio --start


Does that give the same results as using pavucontrol?

No.....it didn't give me any sound.