New motherboard, bad sound quality

[oshunluvr]

p.s. you could try symlinking the modversions.h file to the new location.

sudo mkdir -p /lib/modules/3.2.0-48-generic/build/include/linux
sudo ln -s /lib/modules/3.2.0-48-generic/build/include/linux/modversions.h/usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-48-generic/include/config/modversions.h

[lcharles]

ok oshunluvr I hope you don't mind if I want to take this slowly.

After I re-enabled HDMI in the bios I got the analog sound driver back in settings>system settings>multimedia>phonon>Audio Hardware setup. So I set the Sound Card to "Built-in Audio" And the Sound Driver Playback to (Built-in Analog Stereo) Connector: Analog output. I hit "apply" and I get my problematic sound back.

lspci | grep -i audio --gives me:
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF110 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)

find /sys/devices -name *01:00.1 --gives
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1

So I take it I should put:

echo 1 > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/remove

any where in the /etc/rc.local file. And then reboot. Then see what aplay -l --gives me


And for now it seems I should put off the stuff with the Make file.

[oshunluvr]

Yeah, give it a try. You can always go back and take it out if it does nothing for you.

[lcharles]

Now I get:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: ALC892 Digital [ALC892 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0


Unfortunately the sound still sucks.

[oshunluvr]

You could try the latest drivers from realtek. Looks like they updated June 7th.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/

[lcharles]

Well, I downloaded it. Ran compile, make, and make install. It all seemed to go ok. Sound is still bad.

[oshunluvr]

I hate to ask this so late in the game: You've checked the connections, cables, etc.?

[lcharles]

No problem. Yes, connections are fine. Also I run Windows 7 on occasion and there are no problems there with the sound.

However, the installation of the new driver semi borked my system. The time out for my default OS in grug no longer works, and when I load 12.04 I get an initial login screen, then masses of stuff written all over the screen for a while, then my login screen again. Logs in ok from there, but I've definately trashed something. I reinstalled grub customizer, didn't work. So is there any way to recover from installing this new driver and what the configure, make, make install did to my system?

Can the driver be purged and the old one re-installed? Will it do any good? If I have to re-install my system I guess I might as well move to 13.04. Can that be done through an upgrade? If so, how?

[lcharles]

I'll try some of the suggestions on the ubuntu forum. A new kernel solved all of the side problems, grub etc.. Now I'm just back to dealing with the bad sound quality problem. Just a note I had also have Mint installed on another partition and after I put in the new mother board the sound there is still fine. Go figure.

[lcharles]

I just wanted to thank oshunluvr for the help. After a lot of poking around the solution turned out to be trivial (after the other problems were solved). With the new motherboard I need to use a lower setting on the "Master" volume than with the old motherboard. With anything over 50% I'm overloading some driver and causing distortion. Lower than that and everything works fine.

[HalationEffect]

No wonder that was a tricky one to diagnose! The particular quality of sound that you get when an amplifier (or pre-amp) is over-driven into "clipping" is quite distinctive, and those who've heard it before will likely recognise it if they hear it again. However, for those who've never heard it before and don't know the terminology, it can be very difficult to describe it in writing.

[oshunluvr]

That actually quite common. @here, I keep my speakers at 25% and my volume at 65% and that's plenty loud enough