Arch Linux

hecateluna

Member

From: St. Louis, MO

Registered: 2009-01-21

Posts: 4

no sound with ICH8 soundcard [mostly Solved]

I'm using a Thinkpad X61 laptop (not tablet) with an Intel HDA soundcard.  I've read that there was an issue with this card/laptop with previous versions of alsa and the kernel, but now there should not be.  Here's what I've done so far:

Get packages alsa-lib (1.0.18-1), alsa-utils (1.0.18-1), alsa-oss (1.0.17-1). 

My kernel is up to date (kernel26 2.6.28-3).

[me@alfred ~]$ lspci | grep Audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)

[me@alfred ~]$ lsmod | grep ^snd
snd_seq_oss            31872  0 
snd_seq_midi_event      8192  1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq                49968  4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device          8332  2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_hda_intel         411956  3 
snd_hwdep               9092  1 snd_hda_intel
snd_pcm_oss            40320  0 
snd_pcm                70020  3 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer              21384  3 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc         10120  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
snd_mixer_oss          16512  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd                    50852  13 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_intel,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss

snd_hda_intel is there, and snd_pcsp isn't (this is good?).

[me@alfred ~]$ ls -l /dev/snd/
total 0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 8 Jan 20 19:08 controlC0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 7 Jan 20 19:08 hwC0D0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 6 Jan 20 19:08 pcmC0D0c
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 5 Jan 20 21:22 pcmC0D0p
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 4 Jan 20 19:08 pcmC0D1p
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 3 Jan 20 19:08 seq
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 2 Jan 20 19:08 timer

controlC0 and pcmC0D0p are there, good.

[me@alfred ~]$ sudo modprobe snd_hda_intel
[me@alfred ~]$ sudo modprobe snd_pcm_oss

Added my username to the audio group.  (I retried everything with sudo in case that was the problem, however.  Same results.)

Unmuted the channels in alsamixer (checked at least ten times, done in the interface and also on commandline, no error messages).

[me@alfred ~]$ aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav 
Playing WAVE '/usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 48000 Hz, Mono

Pressed my mute button (in case there's a hardware mute...) and tried again a couple of times.

Ran alsaconf (no error messages), then tried aplay again.  Then did everything above again.

Last edited by hecateluna (2009-01-21 04:19:55)

hecateluna

Member

From: St. Louis, MO

Registered: 2009-01-21

Posts: 4

Re: no sound with ICH8 soundcard [mostly Solved]

Update.  I solved my problem.  Apparently the mute/unmute button was the wrong button to be pressing (even though it would have been the right button in windows).  Pressing the volume-up button worked.

<Speaker> needs to be unmuted, and <Internal> has to be muted, or it produces a constant, high-pitched, annoying beep which was actually very exciting in this context.  (I don't really want or need my internal speaker, but it would be nice to fix this... any ideas?)

skottish

Forum Fellow

From: Here

Registered: 2006-06-16

Posts: 7,942

Re: no sound with ICH8 soundcard [mostly Solved]

You can disable the internal speaker at start up by adding these to the MODULES array in rc.conf:

!pcspkr !snd_pcsp

hecateluna

Member

From: St. Louis, MO

Registered: 2009-01-21

Posts: 4

Re: no sound with ICH8 soundcard [mostly Solved]

I'd really like to have the internal speaker working, but I guess disabling it is an ok option.

skottish

Forum Fellow

From: Here

Registered: 2006-06-16

Posts: 7,942

Re: no sound with ICH8 soundcard [mostly Solved]

I'd really like to have the internal speaker working, but I guess disabling it is an ok option.

Sorry about that. I misread your post.

offray

Member

Registered: 2009-06-19

Posts: 5

Re: no sound with ICH8 soundcard [mostly Solved]

Hi,

I'm a newbie on Arch. I have almost in the same situation of hecateluna (mine is a X61 tablet). The same commands give the same outputs. No error messages but no sound. Using the mute, vol-up, vol-down, didn't work and I have searched the web for a solution. The most specific post about sound (for Ubuntu) is this:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installin … blet#Sound

But I have all the packages already installed and modules loaded. I really didn't know what can be wrong. Any help or pointer to a solution is really appreciated.

Cheers,

Offray

offray

Member

Registered: 2009-06-19

Posts: 5

Re: no sound with ICH8 soundcard [mostly Solved]

Hi again,

Finally it worked. It was a default of the Xfce desktop, nothing related with Arch or Alsa... Now lets make the tablet work :-)

Cheers