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#1 2013-01-09 01:14:09

dragos240
Member
Registered: 2009-05-23
Posts: 189

Kernel not recognising Creative sound card on laptop.

Hello,

I recently got an absolutely wonderful Alienware M18X R2 for Christmas this year (I paid around 1/2 of the cost, don't judge me) and installed a fresh copy of arch on it. This is unrelated, but the installation process is much more complicated now, why get rid of the curses menu? Aside from that, I have X and ALSA installed and I'm using the system daily. Here are a few issues I've noticed with the audio:

1. The audio never switches from speakers to headphones when they are plugged in. Turning off the speakers in alsamixer *sometimes* fixes this issue.
2. The audio doesn't always work. Sometimes neither the speakers, nor the headphones work.

I know that it's not the ports, nor is it the speakers. I dual boot Windows 7 and Arch now and it works fine in Windows, so it's not an issue with the hardware.

lspci | grep -i audio
01:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Device aab0

Any clue?

EDIT: That's what it may say with lspci, but this is what dell says my order includes:

Creative Sound Blaster Recon3Di with THX TruStudio Pro Software

Thanks,
Dragos

Last edited by dragos240 (2013-01-13 21:21:40)

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#2 2013-01-12 17:04:29

dragos240
Member
Registered: 2009-05-23
Posts: 189

Re: Kernel not recognising Creative sound card on laptop.

I'm wondering why my creative card isn't recognised with lspci and why it acts so oddly. Does anyone else have this issue?

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#3 2013-01-13 21:22:05

dragos240
Member
Registered: 2009-05-23
Posts: 189

Re: Kernel not recognising Creative sound card on laptop.

Updated title. Does anyone have a clue?

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#4 2013-01-16 02:29:52

dragos240
Member
Registered: 2009-05-23
Posts: 189

Re: Kernel not recognising Creative sound card on laptop.

Hello again.

I've done some research on creative cards and have come to the conclusion that until a few years ago, creative cards were largely unsupported. Perhaps that's why this model isn't detected? I've installed pulseaudio and switching from headphones to speakers and back seems to fix the problem most of the time. Plugging the headphones in does nothing to stop the speakers from functioning.

I've noticed an interesting feature of this card, in Windows, you can perform a speaker test whilst the headphones are plugged in, which may explain why it does not switch over to headphones when they are plugged in.

There are no packages in the repository nor the AUR for "creative" cards. According to the ALSA wiki, creative card drivers should be included in the latest release. My sound card isn't all that new, it was released in 2011, 2 years ago, so theoretically, the drivers should be there. My sound is working, but has some bugs.

Am I simply stuck with this problem? I can't find any fixes for this problem anywhere else and I'm really not sure where to turn. I'm providing all the information I can about this topic in the hopes of getting a reply.

Thanks in advance,
Dragos240

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#5 2013-01-16 02:38:51

anonymous_user
Member
Registered: 2009-08-28
Posts: 3,059

Re: Kernel not recognising Creative sound card on laptop.

Try booting an Ubuntu or Fedora live disc and check if the output "lspci | grep -i audio" is the same (or different). Also compare the behavior when plugging in headphones.

Alternatively, maybe try a newer kernel such as linux-lqx (3.7.2) or linux-mainline (3.8rc3). Both are in AUR.

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#6 2013-01-17 21:45:10

mich41
Member
Registered: 2012-06-22
Posts: 796

Re: Kernel not recognising Creative sound card on laptop.

IIRC Creative recently released few HDA codecs, maybe it's one of them?

Try cat /proc/asound/card*/codec* and check if you see "Creative" there.


As for the headphone problem, you are likely stuck with it until ALSA developers write specific code for this codec on this laptop. You may try reporting this to ALSA bugtracker/maling list/whatever or just wait until some other owner does so.

Last edited by mich41 (2013-01-17 21:49:58)

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