Arch Linux

rhallen

Member

Registered: 2012-01-14

Posts: 11

Audio problems on laptop with HDMI + sound card

Hi all,

I have installed Arch on an HP dv6 laptop, which comes with both an ordinary sound card and an HDMI output. I have been unable to get non-HDMI audio to work fully (I have nothing to plug the HDMI output into, so I have no idea whether that is working, nor do I really care at the moment). When I boot the computer into KDE, it does not play a startup sound, nor do I get system beeps where I would normally expect them. However, when I start Chromium and play a YouTube video or the like, the sound works perfectly -- but only from the speakers, not through the headphones.

I have tried to troubleshoot using the steps outlined at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Alsa. I get sound when I run speaker-test, and the output of alsa-info.sh can be found here.

Two solutions suggested by the ALSA wiki page would seem to be non-starters:

1) Disabling HDMI via BIOS. Unfortunately, my BIOS does not give me that option.
2) Disabling the audio codec used by the HDMI output in /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf, since both cards use the same codec.

I have also tried setting the default sound card in user space with the following ~/.asoundrc file:

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 1
device 0
}
ctl.!default {
type hw
card 1
device 0
}

Finally -- and this may be a separate issue -- I managed to map the volume up, down, and mute keys such that they control the volume, but the on-screen volume indicator in the system tray does not respond. Instead, it shows that the volume is muted, and when I click on it, it shows me "IEC958" and a button labeled "Mixer" -- nothing else, no volume slider or anything.

I would be most grateful for any suggestions anybody might have!

/dev/zero

Member

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2011-10-20

Posts: 1,247

Re: Audio problems on laptop with HDMI + sound card

I'm not sure I understand the problem. The title says you're having a problem with HDMI, then you say you don't care about HDMI.

Is the problem that the sound doesn't switch to headphone-only when you plug the headphones in? In that case, that's what the title should say.

rhallen

Member

Registered: 2012-01-14

Posts: 11

Re: Audio problems on laptop with HDMI + sound card

Now it's my turn not to understand, because I don't really see how my title says I'm having a problem with HDMI.

The problem is that sometimes I get sound from the laptop speakers when I expect it (e.g., YouTube videos) and sometimes I don't (e.g., system beeps), and I never get sound from the headphones, ever. I thought it was important that I mention that I have an HDMI card, even though I don't really care if it works, because problems in machines with HDMI cards plus normal sound cards are rather well documented. I can change the title to "partially working sound" if you think that would be better, though personally I find it rather uninformative....

At any rate, I've been at this for more than a week with two different distros, none of the existing troubleshooting help I can find seems to work, and nobody seems to have any idea what to do about it (I realize it looks like I'm being impatient, but this isn't the only place I've sought help). Now I really just need to get some work done, so for the time being I'm going to replace Arch with Mint -- the one distro I've found that works flawlessly on this machine. In a few weeks, when I have more time to spend on troubleshooting, I will create a test partition on my machine and give Arch another try.