T43 IBM Thinkpad Intel ICH6 Sound Card- no sound [SOLVED]

Olorin · 2014-12-19 06:58:56

As indicated by the subject heading, I am as of yet unable to get sound from the built-in stock speakers on my T43 IBM Thinkpad. While my speakers seemed to function under the Arch live CD during install (they beeped when I tried to scroll down after hitting the bottom of a page), they have not functioned since install.

I am in the audio group, I have unmuted the playback channels via alsamixer (and I tried changing the sound via the stock xfce4 mixer that came with my DE). I have also tried blacklisting snd-intel8x0m as specified in the ALSA wiki here. Having looked through the thicket of similar problems that come up via internet search and that I found in the arch forums, I have not yet found a solution that has worked for my system. Worth noting: my problem is practically identical to this solved forum post. Unfortunately, the poster did not indicate what the solution is.

Some output to help you help me:

lspci | grep Multimedia

00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)

lsmod | grep '^snd'

snd_intel8x0           34617  2 
snd_ac97_codec    96144  1 snd_intel8x0
snd_pcm                73796  2 snd_ac97_codec,snd_intel8x0
snd_timer              26106  1 snd_pcm
snd                         55101  9 snd_ac97_codec,snd_intel8x0,snd_timer,snd_pcm,thinkpad_acpi

aplay -l

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: ICH6 [Intel ICH6], device 0: Intel ICH [Intel ICH6]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: ICH6 [Intel ICH6], device 4: Intel ICH - IEC958 [Intel ICH6 - IEC958]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

cat /proc/asound/modules

 0 snd_intel8x0
29 thinkpad_acpi

speaker-test -c 2

speaker-test 1.0.28

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 96 to 1048576
Period size range from 32 to 349526
Using max buffer size 1048576
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 262144
was set buffer_size = 1048576
 0 - Front Left
 1 - Front Right
Time per period = 10.993413

I sincerely appreciate any help that you can offer.

Last edited by Olorin (2014-12-21 00:35:29)

kwatrecht · 2014-12-19 19:14:01

Hi I had a similar problem on HP ENVY

It was fixed after installing alsa-utils, pulseaudio and pulseaudio-alsa.
The sound you heared during installation probably wasn't your speaker rather the Computers beeper.

Olorin · 2014-12-19 23:49:51

Yes, now that you mention it it does make more sense that the sounds during install were from the beeper and not the speakers.

While I did have asla-utils installed already, I did not have pulseaudio or pulseaudio-alsa. I installed them both and then rebooted and checked, via alsamixer and xfce mixer, that my volume was unmuted. Still no sound output. Checked with a youtube video, and with speaker-test - 2 in the CLI. Other guesses?

pigiron · 2014-12-20 23:39:12

I hadn't tested sound in my crusty (but trusty) T43 for awhile, so I gave it a try after a fresh update (uname -r = 3.17.6-1-ARCH). It's a model 187116U with BIOS 70ET69WW (1.29 ), EC 70HT28WW-1.05 and a Multimedia audio controller that's identical to yours. The output of /proc/asound/cards shows it has a Analog Devices AD1981B old school AC'97 style audio codec chip:

0 [ICH6 ]: ICH4 - Intel ICH6
Intel ICH6 with AD1981B at irq 22
1 [Modem ]: ICH-MODEM - Intel ICH6 Modem
Intel ICH6 Modem at irq 2

My Thinkpad plays thru the speakers (without pulseaudio installed) with no problem using plain ALSA with no ALSA configurations used, and with no modules blacklisted... but keep reading for my inadequate thoughts.

First, (if you're not currently aware) the sound buttons above the keyboard (Up, Down, Mute) have final control over the sound output, so make sure that they're good. Those buttons are directly wired to the audio hardware on the T43, so no software is involved... although their settings can be displayed. I use the "tpb" daemon from Arch's AUR to do this since I use fluxbox, but the Arch wiki says that other window managers notification methods can perform the same function (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ThinkPad_OSD).

Next in the audio chain are those controls shown in alsamixer, so verify that those are unmuted and adjusted upward (as you've already done). I don't use xfce, so I have no idea where it is in the audio chain.

That was a long winded way to say that on the T43, you need both the alsamixer and the hardware audio buttons to be set correctly to get decent volume from the speakers... but they can go much louder than all my other laptops.

The ThinkWiki page for for the AD1981B chip states that audio is muted if either the Headphone or Line Jack are unmuted on some Thinkpad models, but I find that not to be true for my T43 (http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/AD1981B).

Also, I noticed that my list of loaded audio modules differ slightly from yours:

$ lsmod | grep snd
snd_intel8x0 34617 0
snd_intel8x0m 17500 0
snd_ac97_codec 96144 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m
ac97_bus 12462 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm 73796 3 snd_ac97_codec,snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m
snd_timer 26106 1 snd_pcm
snd 55101 6 snd_ac97_codec,snd_intel8x0,snd_timer,snd_pcm,thinkpad_acpi,snd_intel8x0m
soundcore 12895 1 snd

(i.e. importantly, you don't show "ac97_bus" nor "soundcore" modules), but that's likely due to the difference in the grep parameters used.

My last (poor) thought is that the speakers are muted if it thinks headphones are plugged in (and you didn't mention if headphones work or not). Sometimes (but rarely) that can happen if the internal jack contacts get dirty. Try plugging/unplugging some headphones into the jack a bunch of times and just maybe they will make contact correctly again.

Olorin · 2014-12-21 00:34:34

pigiron, you are a gentleman and a scholar - installing tpb from AUR did the trick. I was unaware that the thinkpad volume buttons go straight to the hardware in such a way. These buttons did not work at any point during or after my install, but I did not make a causal connection between the buttons' unresponsiveness and my lack of sound output until I read your post. I appreciate your assistance, as well as that of kwatrecht, and I am marking this thread as solved.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-12-19 06:58:56

T43 IBM Thinkpad Intel ICH6 Sound Card- no sound [SOLVED]

#2 2014-12-19 19:14:01

Re: T43 IBM Thinkpad Intel ICH6 Sound Card- no sound [SOLVED]

#3 2014-12-19 23:49:51

Re: T43 IBM Thinkpad Intel ICH6 Sound Card- no sound [SOLVED]

#4 2014-12-20 23:39:12

Re: T43 IBM Thinkpad Intel ICH6 Sound Card- no sound [SOLVED]

#5 2014-12-21 00:34:34

Re: T43 IBM Thinkpad Intel ICH6 Sound Card- no sound [SOLVED]

Board footer