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.