Arch Linux

natpjohnson

Member

Registered: 2011-06-29

Posts: 16

Having trouble controlling my audio

When I first installed Arch, my audio was going fine, I even set up keyboard shortcuts to either turn up, down, or off the sound. But for some reason, recently, these shortcuts do nothing to the volume. If I open up alsamixer in the terminal and then do the shortcuts, I see the levels going up and down ccordingly, but there is still no sound. But when I look at the desktop environment's sound control while doing the shortcuts, the desktop enivironment's toggle doesnt move at all. Either way, it seems neither the desktop environment's audio control, nor alsamixer actually does anything to the sound.  At first, I was getting no sound in XFCE at all and full blast sound in KDE with no control over it. But now Im not getting any sound at all in either environments.
when I run "amixer" it lists master volume at "0" even though when I run "alsamixer" it says otherwise.
What is going on here?

Any help given is greatly appreciated.

Last edited by natpjohnson (2011-08-07 21:24:18)

lagagnon

Member

From: an Island in the Pacific...

Registered: 2009-12-10

Posts: 1,087

Website

Re: Having trouble controlling my audio

I wonder if you did a recent system upgrade. If you did read over your /var/log/pacman.log file. Recent changes to alsa (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Alsa say that:

Note: Since udev>=171, the OSS emulation modules (snd_seq_oss, snd_pcm_oss, snd_mixer_oss) are not loaded by default: load them with modprobe and/or add them in the MODULES array in /etc/rc.conf if they are needed.

That might be your problem.

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Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a dark room. Metaphysics is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there. Religion is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there and shouting "I found it!". Science is looking for a black cat in a dark room with a flashlight.

natpjohnson

Member

Registered: 2011-06-29

Posts: 16

Re: Having trouble controlling my audio

I wonder if you did a recent system upgrade. If you did read over your /var/log/pacman.log file. Recent changes to alsa (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Alsa say that:

Note: Since udev>=171, the OSS emulation modules (snd_seq_oss, snd_pcm_oss, snd_mixer_oss) are not loaded by default: load them with modprobe and/or add them in the MODULES array in /etc/rc.conf if they are needed.

That might be your problem.

It seems now that if i log in on XFCE my sound will not work. So I switch over to KDE and now it works, but only with the Desktop Environment's audio control. I logged back into XFCE because I like it better and it still works, but with the same deal.

I don't really consider that a fix, as its inconvenient as all hell, but wouldn't this show that as not being a modules problem? After all, it loaded by itself, without my intervention, even if it took a bit of logging into different environments.

lagagnon

Member

From: an Island in the Pacific...

Registered: 2009-12-10

Posts: 1,087

Website

Re: Having trouble controlling my audio

Get back into xfce, open a terminal and then post to this thread (or a pastebin) the output of "amixer".

---

Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a dark room. Metaphysics is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there. Religion is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn't there and shouting "I found it!". Science is looking for a black cat in a dark room with a flashlight.

natpjohnson

Member

Registered: 2011-06-29

Posts: 16

Re: Having trouble controlling my audio

Get back into xfce, open a terminal and then post to this thread (or a pastebin) the output of "amixer".

Simple mixer control 'Master',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined penum
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 65536
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 58982 [90%] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 58982 [90%] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Capture',0
  Capabilities: cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined penum
  Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Capture 0 - 65536
  Front Left: Capture 65536 [100%] [on]
  Front Right: Capture 65536 [100%] [on]

This is as of right now on a first log in onto XFCE without logging into KDE yet, so the sound does not work.

natpjohnson

Member

Registered: 2011-06-29

Posts: 16

Re: Having trouble controlling my audio

I guess the least confusing way to give my “symptoms” would be in a list format. (Sorry, its still going to be pretty confusing)

-Ive noticed if I try to load any flash video, the sound doesnt work at all
-Also, sound doesnt work for any other applications including my media players
-The sound DOES work in XFCE only when I've logged into KDE where the sound loads properly, to which then I can log back into XFCE and it works.
-The given XFCE audio mixer utility does NOT seem to affect ALSA in any way, where if I make an adjustment on the XFCE mixer, then run “amixer” in a terminal, the volume levels don't seem to be changed
-However, after Ive logged back into XFCE from logging into KDE, the XFCE mixer is the ONLY way to control volume level. Running any ALSA commands to increase or decrease volumes in the terminal does nothing.
-In KDE, though, running ALSA commands DOES affect volume
-Ive done a complete removal of XFCE4 and reinstalled it to no avail, it still gives me this problem

Sidenotes:
-I don't know if its directly related, but Adobe flash player runs at double speed(way too fast) as well, until, of course, I log into KDE and it corrects the problem.
-Some of my daemons don't load on XFCE either; like Conky or Pidgin.

*Again, everything is completely fixed when I log into KDE, so what is KDE loading differently from XFCE? Ive noticed that when I turn on my computer and log into XFCE, it still flashes my old wallpaper and brings up certain windows as if I saved a session or something, which I havent.