ALSA URGENT HELP NEEDED!

[raid517]

Hi I have had terrible trouble getting alsa to work on my machine. Currently I have tried just about every distro going and the only one it did work on is Gentoo. Unfortunately gentoo killed itself during an emerge operation and would have required way too much effort for me to fix.

Well anyway, as the saying goes 'in for a penny, in for a pound'. So I thought the best approach would be to start from scratch with a new distro minus any alsa components at all. So I downloaded Connectiva (due to it's vey seemingly standard structure) removed everything I could find that had anything to do with alsa (via apt) which checking providing it didn't break anything too drastic (eg there are some libs that KDE needs to work properly that relate to alsa - and apt threatened to remove all of KDE if I removed these). But anyway, I sucessfully got rid of all of the main libraries, drivers and utilities.

I then went to kernel.org and grabbed the latest kernel which is I believe 2.6.8.1 (at the last count) and configured alsa into my kernel (that is not as a module) along with sound card support, my specific sound card, OSS mixer and OSS digital out stuff (although I kept the OSS stuff as modules). (I didn't keep any of the actual OSS sound stuff itself though). I also went to the alsa web site and grabbed the latest alsa libs and alsa utils, compiled and installed them.

But here is where I get a bit fuzzy about all this. I mean have I done all this in the right order and is this all I need to do? What do I have to do now to get alsa up and running so that I can start using it? As of right now I still have no sound. If I do dmesg the output from my last reboot says:

ALSA device list:
  No soundcards found.

So clearly alsa can't find any cards. This has to mean logically that there must be a file somewhere I should edit that tells alsa what cards to use. But as I said, Connectiva doesn't seem to follow the Gentoo format for the location (or possibly the syntax?) of all the various alsa configuration files.

A few questions spring to mind therefore.

First is the process of configuring alsa fundamentally the same accross all the distros? If so what are the most common files (and where are they located) alsa uses to specify which cards it should use?

Second must the version of alsa libs and alsa utils I install exactly match the version of alsa driver I have running in my kernel (which is 1.4 I believe)

What is the exact process (beyond enabling support in the kernel) for getting alsa to work on distros running a 2.6x kernel? What additioanl tools, libraries and/or utilities are needed.

Is it possible to patch my kernel to the latest alsa version and if so how? (Not vital to solving my problem, but interesting to know nonetheless).

And that's about it really - or at least all I can think of for now.

Please can somebody offer their input on this? I have been going at it for days and now I have resolved all the other problems, sound is still my only remaining issue.

I would really appreciate the help guys.

All input no matter how small is very much welcome.

Best regards,

GJ

[kjordan2001]

First is the process of configuring alsa fundamentally the same accross all the distros? If so what are the most common files (and where are they located) alsa uses to specify which cards it should use?

Yes, the config files are in /etc or a subdirectory of it. The binary files are in /usr/bin or maybe some in /bin

Second must the version of alsa libs and alsa utils I install exactly match the version of alsa driver I have running in my kernel (which is 1.4 I believe)

No.

What is the exact process (beyond enabling support in the kernel) for getting alsa to work on distros running a 2.6x kernel? What additioanl tools, libraries and/or utilities are needed.

Just the kernel, alsa-libs and alsa-utils. Have you run alsamixer yet? It may be that the levels aren't set for that card yet so that may be the problem.

Is it possible to patch my kernel to the latest alsa version and if so how? (Not vital to solving my problem, but interesting to know nonetheless).

You shouldn't need to, nor have I seen any patches that do.

[raid517]

Yes, the config files are in /etc or a subdirectory of it.  The binary files are in /usr/bin or maybe some in /bin

Well that is something of my difficulty you see, I am not certain what I am looking for? If I knew this perhaps I might get a head start on knowing where to find them.

Do you know what these config files are called? In other words, which files specifically are likely to be of most interest to me?

Thanks very much for your input.

Regards,

GJ

Edited August 16, 2004 by raid517

[threetonesun]

Did you check the ALSA soundcard matrix for your card? They have little hints and tips at the end for most card specific problems.

[raid517]

Yes - and the bottom line is that I now have alsa working. However the sound appears to be comming from a different output jack on my audigy card (black as opposed to green now) and I still can't hear any digital sound output - which as this is the main source of all my sound - is the primary focus for my interest.

Alsamixer shows all volumes unmuted.

However gnomexixer-gui shows two additional channels that I have not seen before on any previous setup (when using the same Audigy 2.0 card) both of which are called 'Audigy Analoge Digital Output Jack'.

Both of these controls cannot be unmuted using an graphical mixer that I can find.

They also seem to be followed by a lot of what looks like garbage characters. (Feel free to take a look below) in alsasound.state. I am not sure what alsa sound state is, but it appears to define which mixer controls are present and their respective volume levels.

Any hints on how to progress from here would be very much appreciated.

Best regards,

GJ

asound.state.txt

[raid517]

Whoopeee it's working, as it turned out it was mixer settings, for some weird reason the installed OS installer had enabled something called 'Sigmatel Sourround Phase Inversion Playback' whatever the hell that is. Anyway muting this brought my digital outs back on line.

I now have accelerated video top notch sound and am basically good to go.

Just a few minor bugs with synaptic and apt4rpm to work through now and i'm done.

Man all that effort - and who would have thought it was something as simple as mixer settings alll along.

GJ