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Old 05-16-2004, 12:22 AM   #1
Aeiri
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Sound Issue, A7N8X-E Deluxe Onboard


I'm using snd-intel8x0 on ALSA for the A7N8X-E Deluxe Onboard Sound, and everything plays fine and all, except for one minor problem....

I get this weird static like sound through the speakers. It's sort of like a CPU monitor in a way, when the CPU is being highly used, it is a louder static sound, and when it isn't being used you can barely notice it. Sometimes when I'm testing my graphics config it turns out to be quite useful, as when I can't see anything I can "hear" the frames rendering (I hear a little bit louder static for each frame, so when I have a bad config and the FPS is going so slow that it's still in a dark part, I can still tell how fast it's rendering).

Normally I wouldn't care about this, but since I upgraded my kernel a few hours ago to 2.6.6, it no longer is just a little bit of static. Now I get a loud high pitched screeching beep type sound that comes out of the speakers, except when sound is being played. When sound is being played, it's a softer screech and it is less frequent than without.

Now most of my sound is absolutely HORRIBLE. I have no clue what is wrong, does anyone have any ideas?

Last edited by Aeiri; 05-16-2004 at 12:24 AM.
 
Old 05-16-2004, 02:55 AM   #2
Electro
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Several kinds of on-board sound are not known to have good audio output. They are well known to the conditions you are having such as static, distortion, hearing the data bus, etc. I suggest buying a sound card like Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. It sounds a lot better than Creative Labs sound cards. I do not know if you compiled ALSA in kernel version 2.6.6. You may want to download ALSA and compile it. Also try to download nvidia's drivers to see if they fix your problem.
 
Old 05-16-2004, 09:53 AM   #3
Scruff
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I am running the same board on my desktop and never experienced any of those problems. I use ALSA personally, so you might try as Electro suggested and get it running properly. You don't need to bother with nvidia's drivers unless you need the extra NIC.

This ASUS board is not one of the boards known for bad sound output. It is the board giving standalone soundcard makers some real competition and produces excellent sound. I replaced my onboard sound with an audigy though, because I couldn't get more than one app at a time to use the soundcard even with nvidia's drivers.

Even when you use ALSA in the 2.6 kernel, you still need to install some of the utilities and such. Check out the Gentoo ALSA HOWTO: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/alsa-guide.xml
 
Old 05-16-2004, 11:51 AM   #4
Aeiri
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Quote:
Originally posted by Scruff
I am running the same board on my desktop and never experienced any of those problems. I use ALSA personally, so you might try as Electro suggested and get it running properly. You don't need to bother with nvidia's drivers unless you need the extra NIC.

This ASUS board is not one of the boards known for bad sound output. It is the board giving standalone soundcard makers some real competition and produces excellent sound. I replaced my onboard sound with an audigy though, because I couldn't get more than one app at a time to use the soundcard even with nvidia's drivers.

Even when you use ALSA in the 2.6 kernel, you still need to install some of the utilities and such. Check out the Gentoo ALSA HOWTO: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/alsa-guide.xml
I installed ALSA manually, not built into kernel. I'm using ALSA 1.0.4 (driver, lib, and utils).

What options did you use for ./configure on ALSA? I used:

./configure --with-cards=intel8x0,ens1371 --with-sequencer=yes

(the ens1371 is a second card I have via PCI, it's a cheapo Soundblaster 16 PCI, so I'm only wanting to use it temporarily until I can get the onboard to work)

Another note is, after I switched to the PCI card, I don't get the CPU sound anymore, but I DO, however, get the screeching sound, however it's a lot fainter than before (almost unnoticeable without any sound playing, completely unnoticeable WITH sound playing).

I'll keep looking around and maybe I'll find something on it. Thanks

EDIT: Also, when I "lspci | grep audio" I get:

00:05.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce MultiMedia audio [Via VT82C686B] (rev a2)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AC97 Audio Controler (MCP) (rev a1)
01:09.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI (rev 04)

(the Ensoniq is the Soundblaster 16 PCI)

Is there a reason that two of them are showing up? It also used to say "NVidia nForce2:Realtek ALC650 rev 3", why did it change?

Last edited by Aeiri; 05-16-2004 at 11:56 AM.
 
Old 05-16-2004, 11:57 AM   #5
Aeiri
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Whoops... just found this on the Gentoo description that you gave me:

Quote:
Note: Possibly, this will also work if you build 'Sound Card Support' in the kernel (Y) instead of building it as a module (M). However, the official ALSA documentation suggests building it as a module, since ALSA will try loading it.
I built it into the kernel, not as module...

I'll go fix that and see if that helps

EDIT: Upon checking my kernel config, I just found out that I also have ALSA being compiled as a kernel module.... the mix of the soundcore being compiled into the kernel, and two instances of ALSA being installed could possibly be the reason that this is doing this. I'll soon find out

Last edited by Aeiri; 05-16-2004 at 12:01 PM.
 
Old 05-16-2004, 12:34 PM   #6
Scruff
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Quote:


EDIT: Also, when I "lspci | grep audio" I get:

00:05.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce MultiMedia audio [Via VT82C686B] (rev a2)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AC97 Audio Controler (MCP) (rev a1)
01:09.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI (rev 04)

(the Ensoniq is the Soundblaster 16 PCI)

Is there a reason that two of them are showing up? It also used to say "NVidia nForce2:Realtek ALC650 rev 3", why did it change?
Perhaps it's the way the new kernel recognizes it. Mine shows up twice as well with a 2.6.4. Have you made the proper aliases in your /etc/modules.d/alsa* related files?

Also, I always compile soundcard support directly into my kernel, and build the specific card driver as a module.
 
Old 05-16-2004, 01:19 PM   #7
Aeiri
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Quote:
Originally posted by Scruff
Perhaps it's the way the new kernel recognizes it. Mine shows up twice as well with a 2.6.4. Have you made the proper aliases in your /etc/modules.d/alsa* related files?

Also, I always compile soundcard support directly into my kernel, and build the specific card driver as a module.
Hehe....

Quote:
aeiri@localhost:~$ ls /etc/modules.d | grep alsa
/usr/bin/ls: /etc/modules.d: No such file or directory
Okay... so what am I supposed to do with that directory?

I already have:

Quote:
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
alias sound-slot-0 snd-intel8x0
alias snd-card-1 snd-ens1371
alias sound-slot-1 snd-ens1371
In my /etc/modprobe.conf file...

Last edited by Aeiri; 05-16-2004 at 01:20 PM.
 
Old 05-16-2004, 06:28 PM   #8
Scruff
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Oh yea. I forgot you were running slackware. Your entries in modules.conf should be approriate. It's a little different in Gentoo

For reference, my old Slack install, modules.conf looks like this:

alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-emu10k1
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
options snd major=116 cards_limit=1
options snd-emu10k1 index=0


Last edited by Scruff; 05-16-2004 at 06:34 PM.
 
Old 05-16-2004, 09:42 PM   #9
Aeiri
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Quote:
Originally posted by Scruff
alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-emu10k1
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
options snd major=116 cards_limit=1
options snd-emu10k1 index=0
I used to have all that stuff in my /etc/modprobe.conf too, and it didn't affect my sound in any way when I took it out, and since most of that is just OSS stuff I just left it out.

Getting rid of the ALSA in the kernel and switching over to module version of soundcore didn't affect my sound at all... Anyone got any ideas?
 
  


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