Hi Folks - I'm running Debian 4.0 - fantastic. I have a problem when I run a cd player - the s/w picks up track names and goes through the motions but i hear no sounds. Any ideas please - this worked fine with my previous debian 3.1 installation

Its a creative sounblaster sb1000 about 8 years old I think.

Thanks
Greeb

If you have no other sound issues other than CD playback, check your software settings and make sure you have sound output set for digital playback, not analog. What software are you using for CD playback?

Debian 4 offers sound juicer - I tried playing system sounds as well but these don't work.

thanks
greeb

OK. Let´s confirm your soundcard is still detected and the right modules are loaded. Please post the output of and

try launching:

alsamixer

and mute what you don't want, unmute what you do want, and make sure the system is using alsa for sound.

Guys - thanks for help - the alsa mixer did the trick - I think this is probably a fix for a next release, as the sound facility is default off rather than on.

I had to turn on 'analog front' to get sound through my two speakers.

Thanks again,

Greeb

Well I am having the same problem with my Debain Sarge 3.1 and it solves the same way. But I have to set the sound setting everytime I login. I can't keep the settings permanently.

Set it like normal and then run "alsactrl store" (without quotes) to save the settings .

'alsactrl' command was not found on my Debian system, though it showed 'alsaconf', 'alsamixer' & 'alsamixergui'. So my problem is still unresolved, I will search for the tool though. Is there any other way.

The correct command is alsactl not alsactrl. After your sound levels the way you want with alsamixer, try: ... or if this is your nth sound card (where n is the number of soundcards in your computer) replace 0 with n-1. If this command doesn't work directly, you may need to run it as root (I have to run it as root on my distro for it to work). More info is available through

Oops. Sorry for the typo.

Well thanks I found the command 'alsactl' but it works only as root in my system. The command did not help as an user. It seems alsa is not controlling the sound.

I am using 'gnome-volume-control' for setting my sound in GUI mode. I have tried gnome-volume-manager' also. Even the man pages do not contain anything related to saving the settings.

I have even set my sound server to enabled and even system notifications to on. Even that didn't help.

Saving my login session would help, but I see no option for that in my logout dialog box or does Debian save session automatically. I used to get the message 'save session and logout' in Fedora/RedHat I had installed previously.

When you run alsactl as root, what is the exact full command you are typing? Also what is the output of (in this command that's a letter el, not number one after aplay ...)

I used the command:
I don't think alsa is controlling the mixer. The alsamixer is showing volume up on logging in. While the gnome-volume-control is showing volume down. I checked the help on it. It is says 'setting->preferences' where do I get this?

I also used the gnome-volume-manager and set it to --sm-enable (enable session) and --sound-enable (enable sound server). But it also did not help.

The aplay -l showed the device information of my sound card. I think my sound card is fine as I can play sound in Linux, but only that I have to reset the sound level in gnome-volume-control every time I log in as user.

Have you got more than one sound device? I recently ran into a similar issue with the last update to Etch as well early Lenny. Running alsaconf restored the sound but after a reboot, it was gone again and I had to run alsaconf again.

What struck me most is that the Volume Control Center was not showing my SoundBlaster card and that it was using OSS instead of ALSA. I found out that, for some reason, Debian is getting confused by the presence of other sound devices nowadays. I had to add both devices to /etc/modprobe.d/sound and specify index=0 for the SoundBlaster and index=1 for the onboard Intel. Switching off the Intel in BIOS may have the same effect, I haven't tested that.