Help with Alsa Sound on Slack14

enorbet · 01-03-2014, 10:34 AM

Until recently I had but one sound device on my main Slack system, an onboard Intel HDA. That suddenly changed when I upgraded from the Ivy Bridge onboard video to a real video card, an nVidia GTX 760. At the same time that I installed the new video card I also installed my old faithful ESI Juli@ PCI soundcard. I understand that I now have 3 sound devices and I have gone so far as to Blacklist both the snd-hda-intel and the snd-hda-intel-hdmi. In fact I tried blacklisting individually every snd module NOT associated with the Juli@ pci card and I'm still having problems as long as I choose to not use Pulseaudio.

Presently if I look in KDE's System Settings > Multimedia there are only 3 listings... well 4 since the maiin device is also listed as "Default". It looks like this

Code:

ESI Juli@ (ICE1724)
ESI Juli@, ICE1724 (Default Audio Device)
ESI Juli@, ICE1724 (IEC958(S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output)
ESI Juli@ (ICE1724 IEC968)

"lsmod |grep snd" reveals

Code:

  lsmod |grep snd                                              
snd_ice1724           113295  1 
snd_ak4113              5880  1 snd_ice1724
snd_pt2258              2547  1 snd_ice1724
snd_ak4114              6125  1 snd_ice1724
snd_i2c                 3098  2 snd_pt2258,snd_ice1724
snd_ice17xx_ak4xxx      1916  1 snd_ice1724
snd_ak4xxx_adda         6885  2 snd_ice1724,snd_ice17xx_ak4xxx
snd_ac97_codec         90066  1 snd_ice1724
snd_pcm                63752  4 snd_ice1724,snd_ac97_codec,snd_ak4113,snd_ak4114
snd_page_alloc          6130  1 snd_pcm
snd_timer              14898  1 snd_pcm
snd_rawmidi            14982  1 snd_ice1724
snd_seq_device          4280  1 snd_rawmidi
snd                    45011  13 snd_pt2258,snd_ice1724,snd_ac97_codec,snd_timer,snd_i2c,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_ak4xxx_adda,snd_seq_device,snd_ak4113,snd_ak4114
ac97_bus                 870  1 snd_ac97_codec

and "lspci |grep audio"

Code:

 lspci |grep audio                                            
06:01.0 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies Inc. VT1720/24 [Envy24PT/HT] PCI Multi-Channel Audio Controller (rev 01)

and "cat /proc/asound/cards"

Code:

 cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [Juli           ]: ICE1724 - ESI Juli@
                      ESI Juli@ at 0xc080, irq 18

Still I have no sound except on web Flash videos which play just fine. Incidentally if I download the very same flash video and play it with a local app like SMPlayer, the video works fine but zero audio.

I miss "alsaconf" but I did try "alsactl init 0" which didn't help. Any help on LQ?

Alien Bob · 01-03-2014, 02:38 PM

You have PulseAudio installed you say? And you wonder where your sound went? I would check there first. Slackware does not install PulseAudio.

Eric

enorbet · 01-03-2014, 09:55 PM

NO! I do not have pulseaudio installed on my Slackware system. I apologize for the confusion. I should have mentioned that Pulse is default on Ubuntu and Suse and there, sound works.

It does exist on other systems (multi-boot system) until I can safely purge it. I suspected this would be a problem ahead of time as I've read about issues with HDMI, so I researched fairly carefully before I changed hardware. I didn't expect this level of hassle but then I'm probably just missing something silly I've overlooked. However I feel blinded now. Thats why I posted here. I need outside eyes.

ReaperX7 · 01-03-2014, 10:32 PM

If you have ALSA running only with dmix, check your default output in alsamixer and see if you have a secondary device connected. If so, you'll need to setup an ALSA modules.conf file as described such as here:

http://www.alsa-project.org/main/ind...dule-hda-intel

as well as an .asoundrc file for each user also described there.

enorbet · 01-04-2014, 12:32 AM

Thanks Reaper, but I've done all those things and specifically to ice1724 too. For awhile I had intended to use the Intel onboard for voice microphone detail, as in TeamSpeak etc. so I had an .asoundrc I found to do just that. I even pared that down to just Ice1724 once I had difficulties.

I've been trying to follow alsa's troubleshooting path but I feel hindered w/o alsaconf - alsactl init 0 seems awfully generic to me. The error messages I get when trying "speaker-test" or

Code:

  aplay -D default /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

seem inconclusive, but I am determined. I know I'm close.

enorbet · 01-04-2014, 01:26 PM

Well I logged in as root and found that all sound works fine so apparently I have some borked permissions or bad group assignment. I went over all my $HOME permissions making sure they were not root, and now the "aplay" command works as it should. However I'm still getting this error on speaker-test when run as user...

Code:

speaker-test

speaker-test 1.0.27.1

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 1 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 2048 to 16384
Period size range from 1024 to 1024
Using max buffer size 16384
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 1024
was set buffer_size = 16384
speaker-test: relocation error: speaker-test: symbol snd_pcm_get_chmap, version ALSA_0.9 not defined in file libasound.so.2 with link time reference

I emboldened the appropriate section and plead for any help in this.

metaschima · 01-04-2014, 01:37 PM

Can you post the output of 'aplay -l'.

You can set the default card by creating the file '~/.asoundrc' with something like:

Code:

defaults.ctl.card 1
defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.timer.card 1

and the right card number.

enorbet · 01-04-2014, 02:41 PM

Greetz
I've been using Jack and Ardour for many years so my .asoundrc tends to be quite a bit more complex than just the defaults, but to troubleshoot, I first tried a simple default backup style (I just rename them) and then none altogether.

As requested, and as it may help someone else here is aplay -l

Code:

 bash-4.2$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Juli [ESI Juli@], device 0: ICE1724 [ICE1724]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Juli [ESI Juli@], device 1: ICE1724 IEC958 [ICE1724 IEC958]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

As I recently noted, aplay now works. In fact I discovered the major issue blocking KDE System Settings > Multimedia > Phonon. I'm not sure how it happened other than accumulated mess since this system has simply been upgraded since Slackware v12, the last time a fresh install was done, but on the Backend tab of Phonon was
1 - MPlayer
2 - Xine
3- Gstreamer

Simply by putting Xine in the top spot, the test button now works as it should. Apparently some problem in MPlayer had a wide-ranging effect. The command "speaker-test" still does not work (same error message) and I have a lot of apps to check before I mark this solved, but it is looking good now... or rather, sounding good again.

enorbet · 01-06-2014, 02:01 PM

Final Note -
I can't in good conscience mark this solved because I am still having some issues which seem oddly connected to MPlayer. ( I say "oddly" because "smplayer" works now, but "mplayer" won't even launch ) Having seen some other threads about MPlayer makes me wonder if this isn't a growing problem. We shall see I guess. Unless I see activity here I intend to stop reporting since the problem is at least no longer an urgent one. Sound works properly in all I care about or for which I have an alternative.