audio randomly stopped working

Tux the penguin · 2011-05-21 02:44:57

The sound on my computer randomly stopped working yesterday. I think it happened when I installed wine, but I'm not sure...I use alsa and it worked before. I tried rebooting a few times and reinstalling alsa, which didn't help. I did unmute in alsamixer, so that should be ok. From lspci:

00:08.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP79 High Definition Audio (rev b1)

I don't know what other information is necessary, so please tell me what other info would help figure out the problem. I don't see how wine would affect the audio as I had it installed before and the sound worked, I uninstalled for a while to attempt to get rid of left over menu items of uninstalled Windows programs which didnt work but thats not really a problem. I installed Wine again and I have problems this time. I've tried to get sound from my laptop speakers and headphones and through audacious and youtube, and nothing worked. I looked at the alsa page on the wiki, under https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Al … on_Startup but that is only for people who have multiple sound cards, which I don't (as far as I know lol). Audio is fairly important for me (not vital but still... ) so please help. I probably didn't supply enough information, so tell me if there are any log files I should post or something. I looked through /var/log but didn't see any files looked like they would have something to do with sound/alsa. Thanks

Pajaro · 2011-05-21 05:24:53

some time ago I had issues with audio because pc speaker module was getting loaded. check your lsmod output to see if you have to disable any module in rc.conf

Tux the penguin · 2011-05-21 13:13:52

Pajaro wrote:

some time ago I had issues with audio because pc speaker module was getting loaded. check your lsmod output to see if you have to disable any module in rc.conf

Thanks for the suggestion, but that didn't help. I tried disabling the pcspkr module but it didn't make a difference. I saw a few modules relating to oss but I don't think that would affect anything, other than not being necessary to alsa. I also am pretty sure that I had a kernel update that day to 2.6.38.6-2, but I don't think that should have caused this problem before a reboot.

jlindgren · 2011-05-21 14:32:02

If you try to play something with aplay, are there any errors printed?

Pajaro · 2011-05-21 17:16:58

An easy way to know if it is wine related is to create a new user account. If this new user account has audio, then it could be wine, or some other process that starts automatically in your user account.

Last edited by Pajaro (2011-05-21 17:17:22)

Pajaro · 2011-05-21 17:23:36

You can open qjackctl, and in setup it will show how many soundcards are there by expanding the Interface option: programs will use hw0 by default, and, if there is more than one soundcard, udev changes which one is first randomly.

Also keep in mind that hdmi is audio capable, so if your computer has hdmi outputs your audio may be redirected through that device randomly on every reboot.

Tux the penguin · 2011-05-21 18:50:29

jlindgren wrote:

If you try to play something with aplay, are there any errors printed?

No. I just get

Playing raw data '[path to file]' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono

I guess that means that it is playing the music, just not through the speakers?

Tux the penguin · 2011-05-22 01:22:42

Pajaro wrote:

You can open qjackctl, and in setup it will show how many soundcards are there by expanding the Interface option: programs will use hw0 by default, and, if there is more than one soundcard, udev changes which one is first randomly.
Also keep in mind that hdmi is audio capable, so if your computer has hdmi outputs your audio may be redirected through that device randomly on every reboot.

Under the interface option, I have

(default)
hw: 0
plughw: 0
/dev/audio
/dev/dsp

I'm assuming that plughw is the headphone jack? I don't have an hdmi thingy, just vga. But this problem didn't start after bootup. It started randomly while computer was on. It worked after bootup, then when I attempted to listen to music later, no sound came. I don't think it's wine or any program because I didn't get any errors from aplay. Thanks though.

smudge · 2011-05-22 17:07:20

Not sure if this is related but it might be. As soon as I click the Audio tab in winecfg (version 1.3.20) my "Wave" volume slider in alsamixer goes to 0 resulting in no sound system wide. Turn the volume up and everything is fine until I restart winecfg and click the Audio tab again.

Tux the penguin · 2011-05-22 21:56:20

smudge wrote:

Not sure if this is related but it might be. As soon as I click the Audio tab in winecfg (version 1.3.20) my "Wave" volume slider in alsamixer goes to 0 resulting in no sound system wide. Turn the volume up and everything is fine until I restart winecfg and click the Audio tab again.

Thanks, but doesn't help. I don't even have a wave slider in alsamixer lol. When I hit F6 in alsa mixer and select hda nvidia (the only card there, other than default and "enter device name"), the only sliders I get are master, pcm, headphone, speaker, mic, mic boost, s/pdif, internal mic, and internal mic boost. Master and speaker are at 100. I cant change headphone or s/pdif. Any solutions? other than reinstall lol? Maybe I will try to use oss instead, to see if it is an alsa problem or not.

Tux the penguin · 2011-05-22 22:55:50

oss kind of works, but not entirely. When I run osstest, I get this:

Sound subsystem and version: OSS 4.2 (b 2004/201101052228) (0x00040100)
Platform: Linux/x86_64 2.6.38-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri May 13 09:24:47 CEST 2011

*** Scanning sound adapter #-1 ***
/dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcm0 (audio engine 0): HD Audio play front
- Performing audio playback test... 
  <left> OK <right> OK <stereo> OK <measured srate 47989.00 Hz (-0.02%)> 
/dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcm1 (audio engine 1): HD Audio play center/LFE
- Performing audio playback test... 
  <left> OK <right> OK <stereo> OK <measured srate 47991.00 Hz (-0.02%)> 
/dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/spdout0 (audio engine 2): HD Audio play spdifout
- Performing audio playback test... 
  <left> OK <right> OK <stereo> OK <measured srate 47991.00 Hz (-0.02%)> 
/dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcmin0 (audio engine 3): HD Audio rec mix
- Skipping input only device
/dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcmin1 (audio engine 4): HD Audio rec mix
- Skipping input only device

*** All tests completed OK ***

No errors, but only the first test, pcm0 worked. Everything else only gave silence. That didn't help really because audacious/youtube doesnt play either. So I guess it isn't alsa specifice, and therefore isn't wine's fault. (I think?)

jlindgren · 2011-05-22 22:58:08

Tux the penguin wrote:

Thanks, but doesn't help. I don't even have a wave slider in alsamixer lol. When I hit F6 in alsa mixer and select hda nvidia (the only card there, other than default and "enter device name"), the only sliders I get are master, pcm, headphone, speaker, mic, mic boost, s/pdif, internal mic, and internal mic boost. Master and speaker are at 100. I cant change headphone or s/pdif. Any solutions? other than reinstall lol? Maybe I will try to use oss instead, to see if it is an alsa problem or not.

At 100 *and* unmuted ('m' key)?

Pajaro · 2011-05-23 07:48:34

Tux the penguin wrote:

oss kind of works, but not entirely. When I run osstest, I get this:

Sound subsystem and version: OSS 4.2 (b 2004/201101052228) (0x00040100)
Platform: Linux/x86_64 2.6.38-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri May 13 09:24:47 CEST 2011

*** Scanning sound adapter #-1 ***
/dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcm0 (audio engine 0): HD Audio play front
- Performing audio playback test... 
  <left> OK <right> OK <stereo> OK <measured srate 47989.00 Hz (-0.02%)> 
/dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcm1 (audio engine 1): HD Audio play center/LFE
- Performing audio playback test... 
  <left> OK <right> OK <stereo> OK <measured srate 47991.00 Hz (-0.02%)> 
/dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/spdout0 (audio engine 2): HD Audio play spdifout
- Performing audio playback test... 
  <left> OK <right> OK <stereo> OK <measured srate 47991.00 Hz (-0.02%)> 
/dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcmin0 (audio engine 3): HD Audio rec mix
- Skipping input only device
/dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcmin1 (audio engine 4): HD Audio rec mix
- Skipping input only device

*** All tests completed OK ***

No errors, but only the first test, pcm0 worked. Everything else only gave silence. That didn't help really because audacious/youtube doesnt play either. So I guess it isn't alsa specifice, and therefore isn't wine's fault. (I think?)

It is normal that you only get audio from "HD Audio play front" unless you have a 5.1 setup, so oss works as expected.

Tux the penguin · 2011-05-24 01:01:43

Ok thanks that makes sense. So I guess it was an alsa problem. Anyway, I reinstalled and it works now. Or at least the speaker test does, I haven't tried anything else yet. And I reinstalled mainly for other reasons, not simply to fix this lol.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-05-21 02:44:57

audio randomly stopped working

#2 2011-05-21 05:24:53

Re: audio randomly stopped working

#3 2011-05-21 13:13:52

Re: audio randomly stopped working

#4 2011-05-21 14:32:02

Re: audio randomly stopped working

#5 2011-05-21 17:16:58

Re: audio randomly stopped working

#6 2011-05-21 17:23:36

Re: audio randomly stopped working

#7 2011-05-21 18:50:29

Re: audio randomly stopped working

#8 2011-05-22 01:22:42

Re: audio randomly stopped working

#9 2011-05-22 17:07:20

Re: audio randomly stopped working

#10 2011-05-22 21:56:20

Re: audio randomly stopped working

#11 2011-05-22 22:55:50

Re: audio randomly stopped working

#12 2011-05-22 22:58:08

Re: audio randomly stopped working

#13 2011-05-23 07:48:34

Re: audio randomly stopped working

#14 2011-05-24 01:01:43

Re: audio randomly stopped working

Board footer