mplayer no longer sees alsa, won't control volume

RandomTroll · 02-11-2022, 07:43 PM

I re-booted into 5.16.9, now mplayer no longer sees alsa, won't control the volume. alsa is there. I can use amixer or alsamixer to control the volume. I booted into 5.16.8 and the same happened, so the kernel change didn't do it, and it happened a day after upgrading the alsa packages.

alsamixer sees pulse as the default audio; I have to switch to use the hardware directly.

aus9 · 02-12-2022, 03:03 AM

a couple of suggestions.

1) you could kill pulseaudio, but I do not use slackware but some distros hide the true pathway to the daemon under /usr/lib...

2) I am guessing you are claiming the old alsa....did not show pulseaudio in charge of your device?
but what about your sound devices....have they changed order?

Code:

aplay -l

3) If you do not need hdmi output....disable it completely with a file called anything.conf mine is

Code:

cat /etc/modprobe.d/index.conf 
options snd_hda_intel index=0 enable=0

what that says is....if your sound is intel....for the device alsa sees as index=0.....most distros that is hdmi.....disable it
full reboot to test it.

Then the first detected device after disable of hdmi is analog and it gets index=0

this means my full result is

Code:

aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

(b) and I use "apulse firefox" to have sound in my web browser
YMMV

4) you could always re-compile mplayer, vlc, qmplay2 etc to disable pulseaudio.
eg only to show a dirty way of disabling pulseaudio which was a forced dependency in loading some other package
http://tinycorelinux.net/11.x/x86_64...ild-qmplay2.sh

that script contains at least one typo "install/strip" should read as install-strip

lvm_ · 02-12-2022, 04:13 AM

The first step would be to start mplayer in console window and see what messages it displays.

RandomTroll · 02-12-2022, 09:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aus9

you could kill pulseaudio

mplayer, amongst others, uses its libraries,so if I remove the package I would have to build custom versions of mplayer and other software - possible, but I hope for something simpler. I removed the executable but that makes alsamixer not work at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aus9

I am guessing you are claiming the old alsa....did not show pulseaudio in charge of your device?

Yes. It showed the hardware directly.

Code:

aplay -l

returns:

Quote:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC269VB Analog [ALC269VB Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: Generic Digital [Generic Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Quote:

Originally Posted by aus9

3) If you do not need hdmi output....disable it completely with...

That makes it disappear completely and nothing work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lvm_

The first step would be to start mplayer in console window and see what messages it displays.

I run it no other way. mplayer displays exactly the same thing. When I try to change the volume it reports changing the volume; the volume doesn't change: it thinks it's working.

RandomTroll · 02-27-2022, 10:10 PM

Specifying the hardware device with device=hw=0:0 makes it work. A virtual device making it not the default caused the problem.

pisti · 02-28-2022, 01:09 PM

in my experience, playing music from the CLI can be a bit tricky on my Slackware boxes. once in a while i need to kill pulseaudio, depending on what audio sources and clients have been used in other applications. it's an (audio) jungle, at least to me.

here my own notes to play music using 'pulse' with mplayer :

Code:

killall pulseaudio

pactl list cards short

  0       alsa_card.pci-0000_01_00.1      module-alsa-card.c
  1       alsa_card.usb-046d_0809_C2C925C9-02     module-alsa-card.c
  2       alsa_card.usb-GN_Netcom_A_S_Jabra_EVOLVE_LINK_00000000000008-00 module-alsa-card.c
  3       alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1f.3      module-alsa-card.c

mplayer -ao pulse::1 /PATH/myFiles

pavucontrol

or, like you said, RandomTroll, one may use 'hw' :

Code:

mplayer -af channels=2:2:0:0:1:0 -ao alsa:device=hw=0.0 /PATH/myFiles

RandomTroll · 02-28-2022, 11:34 PM

I put

Quote:

ao=alsa:device=hw=0.0

in $HOME/.mplayer/config.

I had it there quoted out with # from the days when I had 2 audio devices and had to switch between them. I've had problems I associated with pulse before. This time it created a virtual device that intercepted volume control - why it started to do that a few days ago after years of not doing it - I don't know.

RandomTroll · 03-02-2022, 12:32 PM

Annoyingly it stopped working again after I rebooted into 5.16.12. I can't make mplayer see the hardware even with the hw switch. If I get rid of pulse alsa doesn't work at all, complaining of its absence. Getting rid of references to pulse in all of alsa's configuration files doesn't help. amixer and alsamixer can manipulate the hardware but won't run if pulse is absent.