Arch Linux

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

ALSA says "Screw you!"

Guys? Remember my sound problem?

Well, I've pinned it down: it's not GStreamer, it's ALSA. Not only does GNOME audio not work, but 'aplay foo.wav' produces no sound output at all, though it claims to be playing the file.

(FYI, I was using the GNOME system sound files to test my sound. Those are .wavs... Yes, I tried a bunch of them. Yes, I definitely used both aplay and GStreamer. And yes, I had all my bloody channels unmuted, every single one of them!)

Judging from what I've seen, alsa-lib should be the heart of the problem... I'll compile and reinstall that with ABS and see where I get.

fuse

Member

From: california

Registered: 2004-04-11

Posts: 38

Re: ALSA says "Screw you!"

Are you loading the modules at boot? I have a friend with a similar issue using Arch and his Audigy 2. We finally got sound by removing the modules from rc.conf (rmmod would not help) and manually modprobe them after boot. I don't know why.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: ALSA says "Screw you!"

Update: compiling and reinstalling alsa-lib via ABS does not help. All I get is static. Yes, I have all channels unmuted, etc...

There is only one thing I can say:

WTF?!

Edit: I use the hotplug daemon, so yes, consider them loaded at boot. And lsmod definitely says they're loaded.

And BTW, I found all of *one* other case of this problem, on a Fedora Core forum: here's the link. Now of course, this fellow had another problem - he forgot to use alsactl restore to restore volumes on startup... But other than that, my problem is a dead ringer for his: everything configured properly, all necessary modules loaded, but no sound whatsoever, no matter what.

(And I really do mean "no sound whatsoever"... Sound not only borks with ALSA, but also with JACK and ESD, and on any combination thereof with GStreamer or ARTS. My computer is literally deaf and dumb under all conditions.)

Edit again: Oh, and in case you ask: when I boot up using a Damn Small Linux live CD (2.4.x kernel), sound works *perfectly*. :?

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: ALSA says "Screw you!"

esd arts gstreamer jackd wont give you any sound if your alsa driver isnt working. Alsa is the actual sound card driver. Artsd and esd provide software mixing, and gstreamer provides an all in one video and audio playing library.

they all need alsa or oss to play.

dauphin

Member

From: Scotland

Registered: 2003-07-09

Posts: 188

Re: ALSA says "Screw you!"

I had a similar problem at one stage:

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=2400

Having taken care to unmute all the channels I found after much experimentation that there was one channel which HAD to be muted in order to get sound.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: ALSA says "Screw you!"

Hmmm, alsaconf works fine for me.

And I have no "exchange" channel.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: ALSA says "Screw you!"

Yes, finally got it working! I muted all input channels and all output channels other than Master, PCM, and CD...I'm guessing the problem was Line or something. At any rate, I now have beautiful sound with no static at all. Thanks guys!