New motherboard, bad sound quality

[lcharles]

I recently installed a new motherboard. There have been a few problems but nothing major so far.

I got the sound to work but the quality is very bad. It keeps breaking up, stuttering. So when the bells try to ring at start up they seem to switch on and off.

[eddieg538]

Hi Charles. It really helps if you let us know as much info about your system as possible. MB model, sound chip installed, etc. Thank you. Is it this board from you previous posts? ECS A77H2-A2X or is it Z77H2-A2X?

[lcharles]

The board is ECS Z77H2-A2X delux v. 2.0

aplay -l gives me:

**** 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
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
larry1204@larry1204:~$

lspci -v | grep -A7 -i "audio", gives me:

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
Subsystem: Elitegroup Computer Systems Device 7c47
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 50
Memory at f6410000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

--
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF110 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
Subsystem: eVga.com. Corp. Device 1463
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
Memory at f6080000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

In the system> multimedia set up , is set to "Builtin Analog Stereo" rather than "GF110 HIgh Definition Audio Controller Digital Sterio (HDMI). Since I am using speakers plugged into the line output form the motherboard.

Hope this helps.

[oshunluvr]

I don't know if this will help but http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/1236

[oshunluvr]

Could be that you have two sound cards installed using the same driver.

[lcharles]

I'll try the tutorial from Mint. How would I know I have two sound cards installed using the same driver?

[lcharles]

Well that didn't go to well. ./configure seemed to run ok. When I ran "make" I got the following error at the end.

cc1: fatal error: /lib/modules/3.2.0-45-generic/build/include/linux/modversions.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
make[1]: *** [memory_wrapper.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/larry1204/Downloads/realtek-linux-audiopack-5.16/alsa-driver-1.0.24/acore'
make: *** [compile] Error 1
root@larry1204:/home/larry1204/Downloads/realtek-linux-audiopack-5.16/alsa-driver-1.0.24#

[lcharles]

Just aquestion, is there a way to purge the driver and re-install it with ""Additional Drivers"? Otherwise from looking on the web I'm a bit over my head with this compiling te driver stuff. A whole lot of people had problems with make not finding modversions.h.

[oshunluvr]

Well, I'm no expert in this arena, but it looks to me like you have you motherboard sound card - ALC892 - which uses the Intel driver and you also have a sound card on your nVidia card that uses HDMI. I'm just guessing that your audio system is confused by this. It could be something else entirely. What shows in System Settings > MultiMedia > Phonon?

[luckyone]

In Phonon check the Audio Hardware Setup tab to be sure of what the system is wanting to use.

[lcharles]

I ran the suggested installer from the Mint post suggested by oshunluvr. I used the automatic option. I just installed a driver called dummy. When I ran the installer again using Make I got the error I posted. Now I have no driver, there is nothing to check in the Audio hardware tab. Or to put it another way, following the suggestion I borked my original sound installation. I'd like to recover the original set up.

My graphics card doesn't have a sound card. In fact I've never seen a third party graphics card with a sound card as part of it. I have no sound card installed. I am using the sound that came with the motherboard. I got analog and HDMI initially because the motherboard offers both choices. I only use the analog option.

Could we just get back to getting the sound driver installed again. Can someone tell me how to get "Make" to complete its run?

[luckyone]

It clearly says that nvidia has the HDMI output. Disable it in BIOS (or the nvidia settings). On boot the system should 'find' the Intel 892 analog device and load the correct driver.

At the very worst you may need to install a newer kernel. But the HDMI needs to be shut off.

[oshunluvr]

It clearly says that nvidia has the HDMI output. Disable it in BIOS (or the nvidia settings). On boot the system should 'find' the Intel 892 analog device and load the correct driver.

At the very worst you may need to install a newer kernel. But the HDMI needs to be shut off.

Maybe the HDMI output is not on the video card, but rather an nvidia chipset on the mobo that supplies audio to the built in hdmi port to go along with the Intel video if you have an iCore processor with built-in graphics?

[lcharles]

oshunluvr, you may have a point. There is video in the CPU. However when I turn off the HDMI in the BIOS as luckyone suggested, and reboot now the only driver listed in "Multimedia>Phonon" is

GF110 HIgh Definition Audio Controller Digital Sterio (HDMI)

The analog driver is not listed, so no sound. When I run "aplay -l" now I get:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
larry1204@larry1204:~$

I should point out that I am using a 560 gtx video card in the PCIe slot of the mother board, so it doesn't seem to me that the video built into the CPU chip should have any effect. Oh yeah and Kubuntu just upgraded the kernal so now I'm running 3.2.0-48-generic whereas when I started this thread I was running 3.2.0-45

What next?

[oshunluvr]

Ok, from what I can see searching the 'net the nVidia driver has an audio pass through that puts audio into the hdmi out from the card. Ok, so turn the onboard audio back on. Then try this:

Find the nVidia audio device: lspci | grep -i audio
On my system output is: 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
Find the folder containing the device: find /sys/devices -name *00:1b.0
On my system output is: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0
Disable the device early in the boot process by adding this to /etc/rc.local:
echo 1 > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/remove

Reboot and the nvidia hda audio devices will be disabled and no driver module should load.

This should free your onboard audio. Then run aplay -l again and look in system setting again and see what's up.