Arch Linux

UniversalEdge

Member

Registered: 2015-01-03

Posts: 2

[SOLVED] USB Sound Card Detected but Not Working

I recently installed Arch on a brand new system, moving away from Linux Mint on a laptop, and I tried to use my M-Audio M-Track but I cannot get ALSA to ouptut to or capture from the card. In running aplay -l, I get:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC889 Analog [ALC889 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: ALC889 Digital [ALC889 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 9: HDMI 3 [HDMI 3]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 10: HDMI 4 [HDMI 4]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 11: HDMI 5 [HDMI 5]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: MTrack [M-Track], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

So ALSA is recognizing it as a playback device. However, whenever I try to use alsamixer to change the device settings, all I get is "This sound device does not have any controls." I checked to see if the usb audio module was loaded with lsmod | grep ^snd and that returned:

snd_usb_audio         143556  0 
snd_usbmidi_lib        27571  1 snd_usb_audio
snd_rawmidi            26806  1 snd_usbmidi_lib
snd_seq_device         13132  1 snd_rawmidi
snd_hda_codec_realtek    67469  1 
snd_hda_codec_generic    63126  1 snd_hda_codec_realtek
snd_hda_codec_hdmi     49213  1 
snd_hda_intel          26387  2 
snd_hda_controller     26938  1 snd_hda_intel
snd_hda_codec         108536  5 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_controller
snd_hwdep              17244  2 snd_usb_audio,snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm                88487  5 snd_usb_audio,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_controller
snd_timer              26614  1 snd_pcm
snd                    73436  16 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_usb_audio,snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_usbmidi_lib,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_seq_device

The hda modules all belong to the onboard audio, which works perfectly fine. Strangely enough, the M-Track worked without any problems whatsoever on Linux Mint 17 on my laptop. Any ideas on what the problem could be?

Last edited by UniversalEdge (2015-01-08 06:09:23)

UniversalEdge

Member

Registered: 2015-01-03

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] USB Sound Card Detected but Not Working

I figured out the problem on my own. The M-Audio M-Track does not have any hardware controllers for volume, which is why alsamixer reports that there are no controls. I had to configure ALSA to control the volume via the softvol plugin. I added the following to ~/.asoundrc:

pcm.softvol {
    type softvol
    slave {
        pcm "MTrack"
    }
    control {
        name "ExternalSC"
        card 0
    }
}

pcm.!default {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "softvol"
}

Another fix for this problem, and the reason why it worked fine on Linux Mint 17, is installing pulseaudio, which will provide software volume control itself.