Ok Here is the deal. I just bought a dell 4600 for college. Well it arrived and the first thing i tried to do was load a version of linux on it (mandrake 9.1). A little bit of lost data and a few coffee stained shirt and i was done. Only my sound isn't working. I am on the edge of insanity because i have tried EVERYTHING i can think of. I went into the control center and made sure it was the right driver. Emk101 or something like that. Then I went into kmix and turned it all up as high as it will go. I saved that as default. I then went into aumix and turned all those up. After that I can get my speakers to respond to my computer....... kinda. What happens is when i turn up the volume from the computer my speakers make this slight crackly noise. Great huh..... Well my cd player does not play the music. Ohh it makes the show of it. I see that stupid counter going and going and going but no music. I dont think that sound plays from the hd either. So instead of jamming out to the latest radiohead cd i will be listening melody of myself sobbing while i bash my head into the monitor. sniffle sniffle. But seriously any help would be great. You don't even have to help. Just call me a loser and confirm my uselessness.

welcome to linux

get a few more cups of coffee and you'll be alright

for audio cd's, you'll need to make sure you have a digital audio cable running from the back of your cd drive directly to your sb live card

also, make sure u download the latest sb live drivers

mandrake's sound config program always helps me through my silent days

its called sndconfig

just run that and it always seems to help, if your successfull you will hear linus pronounce linux

also make sure you have your speakers plugged into the green hole on the sound card


happy linux-ing

Ummm ok. I see where adding the cable could possibly resolve the problem of playing sound from the cd player but how about sounds from the hard drive. Do i need to connect the sound card to the motherboard with a cable along with the pci slot. That doesnt make sense. Or maybe it does.

I tried running sndconfig in the run box thingy. It denied my request. Then I tried running it as root and my arch nemesis SILENT MAN shouted vile curses at me. Of course i could not hear them because he is like his name suggests.... silent. Ok so i got no fun sound of Linus Torvold. Sniffle Sniffle... Not again.

Ohh and another thing that just happened on my last boot. As i booted up an error box popped up. It said something about cpu overload because of the sound server. Im scared.

Ohh and off the topic. The linux community is awesome. I didn't think anyone would pay any attention to my petty problem. So thanks.

who is silent man? and why is he shouting at you?

please could you be more specific?

If it looks like the cdrom/cdrw device is sort of working but with out sound, then you will need to check what device it's looking at.

I have a cdrw and a dvd drive. It's the cdrw that has the audio cable to the sound card, but, mandrake insists on calling them cdrom (the dvd drive) and cdrom2 (the cdrw).

When I did some digging, I found that I have to tell the system to look at /dev/scd0 and not /dev/cdrom or /mnt/dev/cdrom.

That's becasue its a cdrw and uses "scsi emulation" for the burning.

Presume that you are using KDE so you can just go into the config part of kscd or grip (or just grip in gnome) and tell it to look at /dev/scd0 - it works for me. Also enable freedb or what ever your version has and it should also give you the track names.

You can also check to see if the sound is working via the kde control centre (from the K start button) follow the route to the sound options. I think that will also be where you will find the options to try oss instead of alsa and can tell it to change things to see if you still get the sound server warning - there's also a "sound test" button in there - it just gives you the kde start up jingle.

regards

John

i think what your problem may be is that you have your speakers plugged into the wrong jack

There are two modules (drivers) for sound devices one for OSS and other is for ALSA. ALSA modules has a word snd in front of the module. For example, OSS modules for your sound device is emu10k1 and for ALSA modules its snd-emu10k1. This means you are using the OSS module. You will get more flexiblity if you use ALSA module.

Dell likes to use OEM devices because OEM saves money. Your sound card or sound device may or may not have the same chip as the retail device. Double check if your sound card really does have the emu10k1 chip.

If you are able to take out the sound card, buy a different sound card. Turtle Beach Santa Cruz 6-channel is good sound card. I suggest you don't get any Creative Labs sound cards, because they use software to re-sample or dither the sound for higher samples. Also Soundblaster LIVE! or latest versions adjusts the PCI bus so the card can handle the data better. This sometimes screws up your system. Other sound cards don't do this.

If you are running KDE, turn off artsd. artsd sometimes messes up sound on certain systems.

BTW, did you un-mute the CD-ROM in the mixer. You can always run cdda2wav for a fool-proof way of playing audio CDs.

The Exact same problem occured to me too, and I can't seem to get any sound to show at all.

I have the same problems. Is there in the meantime someone who has solved the problem?

To solve the problem buy the retail version of the sound card.

Is your Dell using a "Sound Blaster" card? I 'm running Mandrake 9.1 on a Dell and on a Gateway desktop and sound works fine on both, also on a Dell laptop with the meistro(?) card. "snd config should work. All tho on the gateway I had to tell it it was an ISA card.

My card is "a Creative Labs Sound blaster Live 5.1 (Value 1024v AC3) PCI card": not supported hardware says sndconfig. Are there alternatives, or is supporting a question of time? Is it a good idea to use the Microsoft Unimodem Half-Duplex-device on my motherboeard?