No TV sound - Problem with Pulseaudio and Gnome

Durag · 2013-02-10 17:49:33

Hi Community!

Since January 2013 I got big problems with the sound of my tvcard. The card is a Sundtek Media TV Pro. But after all the problems have nothing to to with the card itself!

So far I found out, that the problem is with Pulseaudio.

- Sound works under Windows on same PC.
- Sound don't work under Arch - not with tvtime, not with vlc, etc.
- Problem occurs even on a new installed system with the Arch-2013-02-01 install medium.

cat /etc/mediasrv.log

[1033] Pulseaudio connect reported an error (6 - Connection refused)
[1033] select error() in audio processor (can be caused because of pulseaudio) (Interrupted system call)

After setting up a new Arch installation with just xorg-server, gnome, tvtime and the sundtek driver from AUR I run journalctl -b:

Feb 10 16:25:15 hightower pulseaudio[636]: [pulseaudio] pid.c:
Daemon already running.

With sudo journalctl | grep 'Feb 10 16:2' I get the following output:

Feb 10 16:25:01 hightower rtkit-daemon[489]: Successfully made thread 488 of process 488 (/usr/bin/pulseaudio) owned by '120' high priority at nice level -11.
Feb 10 16:25:14 hightower rtkit-daemon[489]: Successfully made thread 606 of process 606 (/usr/bin/pulseaudio) owned by '1000' high priority at nice level -11.
Feb 10 16:25:15 hightower rtkit-daemon[489]: Successfully made thread 636 of process 636 (/usr/bin/pulseaudio) owned by '1000' high priority at nice level -11.
Feb 10 16:25:15 hightower pulseaudio[636]: [pulseaudio] pid.c: Daemon already running.
Feb 10 16:28:55 hightower pulseaudio[1000]: [pulseaudio] module-jackdbus-detect.c: Unable to contact D-Bus session bus: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NotSupported: Unable to autolaunch a dbus-daemon without a  $DISPLAY for X11
Feb 10 16:28:55 hightower pulseaudio[1000]: [pulseaudio] module.c: Failed to load module "module-jackdbus-detect" (argument:""): initialization failed.
Feb 10 16:28:55 hightower pulseaudio[1000]: [pulseaudio] socket-server.c: bind(): Die Adresse wird bereits verwendet
Feb 10 16:28:55 hightower pulseaudio[1000]: [pulseaudio] module.c: Failed to load module "module-esound-protocol-unix" (argument: ""): initialization failed.
Feb 10 16:28:55 hightower pulseaudio[1000]: [pulseaudio] main.c: Module load failed.
Feb 10 16:28:55 hightower pulseaudio[1000]: [pulseaudio] main.c: Module load failed.
Feb 10 16:28:55 hightower pulseaudio[1000]: [pulseaudio] main.c: Konnte Daemon nicht initialisieren.
Feb 10 16:28:55 hightower pulseaudio[997]: [pulseaudio] main.c: Start des Daemons fehlgeschlagen.

So, if I understand right, pulseaudio is alreade started by the rtkit-daemon and gnome couldn't start it again.

At https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/30926 I found a hint concerning /etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop and /etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio-kde.desktop.
After removing them from /etc/xdg/autostart and running journalctl -b there are no more errors.

With sudo journalctl | grep 'pulseaudio' I get:

sudo journalctl | grep 'Feb 10 17:4' | grep 'pulse*'
Feb 10 17:41:42 hightower rtkit-daemon[485]: Successfully made thread 484 of process 484 (/usr/bin/pulseaudio) owned by '120' high priority at nice level -11.
Feb 10 17:41:55 hightower rtkit-daemon[485]: Successfully made thread 625 of process 625 (/usr/bin/pulseaudio) owned by '1000' high priority at nice level -11.

In my opinion all looks ok! I also checked the channels with the alsamixer and it looks good, too.

So I ran vlc v4l2://:dev=/dev/video0:width=720:height=576:tuner-frequency=510750:adev=/dev/null:standard=255 - but still no sound.

With cat /var/log/mediasrv.log I checked the drivers logfile:

2013-02-10 17:48:55 [343] SETTING DVB-C
2013-02-10 17:48:55 [343] switching to analog TV
2013-02-10 17:48:56 [343] SETTING PAL/SECAM
2013-02-10 17:48:58 [343] invalid audio input selected: 2
2013-02-10 17:48:58 [343] Setting frequency: 510750000
2013-02-10 17:48:58 [343] Using settings for Europe
2013-02-10 17:48:58 [343] Set Pixelformat: 0 YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV)
2013-02-10 17:48:58 [1033] Starting audio processor (PID 1033)
2013-02-10 17:48:58 [1033] initializing audio in audio processor
2013-02-10 17:48:58 [1033] loaded local pulseaudio driver
2013-02-10 17:48:58 [1033] select error() in audio processor (can be caused because of pulseaudio) (Interrupted system call)
2013-02-10 17:48:59 [1033] Pulseaudio connect reported an error (6 - Connection refused)
2013-02-10 17:48:59 [1033] select error() in audio processor (can be caused because of pulseaudio) (Interrupted system call)
2013-02-10 17:48:59 [1033] Pulseaudio connect reported an error (6 - Connection refused)

I started tvtime again. This time I ran rm -rf ~/.config/pulse/ and killall pulseaudio to kill the Pulseaudio server. I instantly got a loud noise out of my speakers.
I closed tvtime and re-opened it. And there it was: TV SOUND OUT OF MY SPEAKERS!

But now, when I run pavucontrol I get:

Connection to PulseAudio failed. Automatic retry in 5s.

In this cas this is likely because PULSE_SERVER in the Environment/X11 root Windows Properties or default-server in client.conf is misconfigured.
This situation can also arrise when PulseAudio crashed and left stale details in the X11 Root Windows.
If this is the case, then PuseAudio should autospawn again, or if this is not configured you sould run start-pulseaudio-x11 manually.

I got the information from Sundtek, that Pulseaudio should not be started as system service. Instead, every user should have an own Pulseaudio daemon and that PA was concepted this way. But they don't know how it is implemented in ArchLinux.

I also don't know it exactly. So the question to all you ArchLinu pro's:
How is PA implemented in Arch? And how can I sustainable solve my problem?

Thank you for your time and help!

Durag

Durag · 2013-02-11 01:15:31

There is just one more thing I found out.
After logging into Gnome and running ps aux | grep pulse I get:

rebel      727  0.7  0.2 444316 10288 ?        S<l  03:02   0:00 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog
rebel      731  0.0  0.0  71236  2652 ?        S    03:02   0:00 /usr/lib/pulse/gconf-helper
rebel      843  0.0  0.0  17396  1184 pts/0    D+   03:03   0:00 grep pulse

To get the sound to work I run:

rm -rf .config/pulse/
killall pulseaudio
killall -9 pulseaudio

I again run ps aux | grep pulse

rebel     4016  4.2  0.2 510124 11528 ?        Sl   03:06   0:02 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog
rebel     4020  0.0  0.0  71368  2700 ?        S    03:06   0:00 /usr/lib/pulse/gconf-helper
rebel     4046  0.0  0.0  19456  1216 pts/0    R+   03:07   0:00 grep pulse

I can recognize that the STATs have changed. Maybe this can help to solve the problem?

nomorewindows · 2013-02-12 00:01:53

You may not even need pulseaudio. I think I goofed up my TV audio by installing pulseaudio. But somehow I got it back. It really was strange. You can also use mplayer to run your radio and TV tuner.

Durag · 2013-02-12 10:27:47

@nomorewindows: Pulseaudio is a dependency of Gnome 3, so I have to install it.

I reinstalled Arch again and this time I just did a base installation with xorg-server, xfce4, slim and the sundtek driver from AUR -> sound is working in this configuration.
As soon as I install pulseaudio, I get errors and again sound is not working.

nomorewindows · 2013-02-12 11:41:09

Durag wrote:

@nomorewindows: Pulseaudio is a dependency of Gnome 3, so I have to install it.
I reinstalled Arch again and this time I just did a base installation with xorg-server, xfce4, slim and the sundtek driver from AUR -> sound is working in this configuration.
As soon as I install pulseaudio, I get errors and again sound is not working.

Maybe pulseaudio is muted, and you need to check pavucontrol or the pulseaudio-alsa if you are using alsa.

Last edited by nomorewindows (2013-02-12 11:41:37)

Arch Linux

#1 2013-02-10 17:49:33

No TV sound - Problem with Pulseaudio and Gnome

#2 2013-02-11 01:15:31

Re: No TV sound - Problem with Pulseaudio and Gnome

#3 2013-02-12 00:01:53

Re: No TV sound - Problem with Pulseaudio and Gnome

#4 2013-02-12 10:27:47

Re: No TV sound - Problem with Pulseaudio and Gnome

#5 2013-02-12 11:41:09

Re: No TV sound - Problem with Pulseaudio and Gnome

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