Arch Linux

tflogic

Member

Registered: 2015-01-04

Posts: 2

No Sound Output but Still Loaded

Hi guys, this is my first journey with Arch Linux and this introduction process has been fairly trouble-free with the exception of getting my sound system working.

Right now I'm running a Macbook Pro 6,2 (Mid 2010) with two audio devices: 1) an Intel integrated card(labeled=MID) and 2) a Nvidia HDMI card(label=NVidia). Since I'm not using any HDMI outputs, I'm trying to get the Intel card to output sound but it seems like nothing I do is working. I've combed through both the wiki pages on ALSA and the Macbook#Sound configuration section but so far, it's a no-go. According to /dev/snd, the sound modules are indeed loaded. "speaker-test" has no problem running but there's no sound output. I've tried muting and playing around with volume levels in alsamixer. Right now, I'm guessing that I might have missed something with my .asoundrc? I'm not entirely sure.

Here's all the relevant information...forgive me if I missed anything.

aplay -l

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: MID [HDA Intel MID], device 0: CS4206 Analog [CS4206 Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: MID [HDA Intel MID], device 1: CS4206 Digital [CS4206 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

cat /proc/asound/modules

0 snd_hda_intel
1 snd_hda_intel

/etc/mprobe.d/alsa-base.conf - setup according to the Macbook page

options snd_hda_intel model=intel-mac-auto

lsmod | grep '^snd' | column -t

snd_hda_codec_hdmi     49213   4
snd_hda_codec_cirrus   17630   1
snd_hda_codec_generic  63126   1   snd_hda_codec_cirrus
snd_hda_intel          26387   5
snd_hda_controller     26938   1   snd_hda_intel
snd_hda_codec          108536  5   snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_controller,snd_hda_codec_cirrus
snd_hwdep              17244   1   snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm                88487   5   snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_controller
snd_timer              26614   2   snd_pcm
snd                    73436   16  snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_cirrus

and my .asoundrc includes the following according the the ALSA#configuration wiki...(before and after these additions to .asoundrc didn't make a difference)

pcm.!default {
    type hw
    card 0
}

ctl.!default {
    type hw
    card 0
}

If someone could lend a hand, I'd greatly appreciate. I know that it can get working since it was working out of the box flawlessly on an Archbang install but I wanted to do things the right way, The Arch Way, this time around.
:)

iceflower

Member

Registered: 2015-01-04

Posts: 1

Website

Re: No Sound Output but Still Loaded

Hi

I have a similar setup with AMD/ATI devices. Try to set the order of the soundcards (Alsa#Set_the_default_sound_card): Look up your "vid" and "pid" values with "lspci -nn" and change the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf to:

# SB [HDA ATI SB]
options snd-hda-intel index=0 model=auto vid=1002 pid=1308
# HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI]
options snd-hda-intel index=1 model=auto vid=1022 pid=780d

...or something like that. After that my soundcard worked but the sound quality was poor (no bass).

Hope this helps.

Last edited by iceflower (2015-01-04 12:46:41)

tflogic

Member

Registered: 2015-01-04

Posts: 2

Re: No Sound Output but Still Loaded

Hi iceflower, thanks for the response!

Unfortunately, I tried your method of setting up the default order of the sound cards in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf with the correct VID and PID values from "lspci -nn" but it didn't work. When I did so, it loaded my soundcards in the wrong order according to aplay -l, the NVidia card first and the Intel card second. And when I went to test my audio in my cmus player, I received an error I'd never experienced before "error: opening device", an error I didn't get when I was using my prior alsa-base.conf.

Any additional thoughts?

Last edited by tflogic (2015-01-04 18:49:28)