Sound still not working after alsa driver install
 

Hi all,

I've just installed alsa drivers/utils/lib package 0.9.6 and although everything went well, I still don't have sound.

I've checked the mixer settings, and they are not on mute and I've set their volume correctly.

Whenever I try to play a sound file, nothing happens or the program locks up. Nothing shows up when I type dmesg, but I found this in my system log:

When I did the modprobe commands after alsa driver installation, there was no error, so I'm baffled as to what this error is.

Could someone please give me a hint as to the next step to take after installing the drivers? Do I need to modprobe something else?

Thanks in advance,
alf829

as you may have noticed, there are TONS of levels in the alsa mixer. i used to think that alsa was broken too, but a friendly guy in IRC just told me to keep adjusting EVERY level up and down until i get sound. 10 minutes later i had it. as for the locking up and that errror, they both baffle me, although the error doesnt seem alsa-specific.

btw, if you're going to use alsa to play files with xmms, you'll need the alsa-oss package (also available from the main alsa page). It's much better than the other driver for oss.

Hi martinman,

Thank you very much for your help.

I've already set all of the levels as high as they can go. The baffling thing is, everytime I start xwindonws again ie reloggon, restart, etc, the sound levels all go back down to zero again.

Should that be happening?

Thanks. I'll download and try it :)

Cheers,
alf829

hmmm...turning all the levels up at once wouldn't do much good. Like, start play a CD, then go through every level turning each one up and down until you find the right one. If you have the gnome-alsamixer this becomes a lot easier. I'll get the link for ya:

http://www.paw.co.za/projects/gnome-alsamixer/

or if you dont use gnome:

http://www.iua.upf.es/~mdeboer/projects/alsamixergui/

Thanks! :)

I'll give it a try.

As for my sound levels being reset everytime, I read somewhere on this board that I have to save my mixer settings using alsactl store and now everything's loading up properly now :)

Cheers,
alf829

Hi,

I've downloaded the gnome alsamixer program, but I cannot install it :(

I get an error such as:
error: Failed dependencies:
alsa-lib >= 0.9.0 is needed by gnome-alsamixer-0.9.3-paw.1
libasound.so.2 is needed by gnome-alsamixer-0.9.3-paw.1
libasound.so.2(ALSA_0.9) is needed by gnome-alsamixer-0.9.3-paw.1

I already have the alsa-lib library, so I don't understand how it cannot find it.

hmm...looks like you something went screwy with the alsa-lib package install. reinstall it and try again.

Ok, I will do that again.

Could this be why I still get errors when trying to play sounds?

Btw, when I type "cat sound.au > /dev/dsp", I get a write error. What could be causing this?

i cant help much, but I'll refer you to this post

That's ok. I will take a look at the link.

Thank you very much for your help though martinman :)

np

btw what sound card do you have, lol?

lol, I didn't even realise I didn't mention it.

I have an old ISA sb awe64 sound card, so that's why I'm having so much trouble with it :)