No sound

[davidfromoz]

I just installed Kubuntu 7.10. Everything seems to be working pretty well. But there is no sound.

My system:
I think the relevant information is I have an Asus M2N-SLI motherboard with an nforce 570 chipset. I also have a USB headset. Both of them work under W2K so I am pretty sure my hardware is not broken.

What happens:
Well everything seems to work OK. KMix can see my NVidea HDA sound and my USB headset (if I plug it in). Kaffeine will quite happily play a song. But no sound comes out.

System settings is set to "hardware detect".

I have been reading this post: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=205449

aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: AD198x Digital [AD198x Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

lspci -v
<snip>
00:06.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP55 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Unknown device 81f6
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 20
Memory at fe020000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
<snip>

I did some hunting around and I think my device might be snd-hda-intel and when I do:
modprobe snd-hda-intel
it returns no message at all (which I am guessing means its activated). This device is not listed in /etc/modules

Even after doing the modprobe thing my sound is still not working. I am kind of suspicious that since my headset is not working either I am missing something simple.

Oh, one more thing. I can't find alsamixer on my system. Maybe something basic is not installed?

Any help much appreciated.

cheers,
David

[marshallbanana]

Re: No sound

To find alsamixer. Open command line and type alsamixer
(you won't find it in the menus as its not really an application)

[davidfromoz]

Re: No sound

Thanks Marshall. Yes, when I do try to type it in at the command prompt the command is not found.

cheers,
David

[marshallbanana]

Re: No sound

Hmm, weird, I guess its not installed then. Normally its installed by default. Use adept to install:
alsa-base
you may also need some other alsa packages but I'm unsure (I have a bunch more, but thats because I added them while trying some stuff a while back), maybe someone else could add a reply if there are some other ones installed by default.

[davidfromoz]

Re: No sound

I tried to install alsa-base and apt-get told me that it was already installed. Then I ran alsamixer and it worked. It seems to contain the same information as the graphical mixer under the UI. Anyway, alsamixer looks to identify everything and I can change and enable/disable things.

But still no sound :-(

cheers,
David

[davidfromoz]

Re: No sound

So I was wondering if the problem might be related to some confusion over two sound devices. I have a USB headset and a motherboard based soundcard. I couldn't say for sure, but I think the headset was plugged in when I did the install.

So I booted Kubuntu from my installation CD and hey presto sound is working.

Is there a way for me to reinstall sound support from scratch without reinstalling Kubuntu? I've spent a week getting all the right software installed, getting my iPod working, getting ripping of CDs and DVDs working just right and lots of other things. Of course I'm willing to reinstall to get my system working perfectly, but I'd prefer to just somehow reset my sound system. I tried:

sudo apt-get --purge remove linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils
sudo apt-get install linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils

But its not working after that.

cheers,
David

[marshallbanana]

Re: No sound

if you run
aplay -l
and
lspci -v
from the live cd do you get the same things as from your install?
and does alsamixer have all the same channels listed?

[davidfromoz]

Re: No sound

aplay -l output is almost the same in those cases. Only the devices bit changes.
aplay -v hangs in both cases.

boot from HD install

card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: AD198x Digital [AD198x Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

boot from CD

card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 1: AD198x Digital [AD198x Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

[davidfromoz]

Re: No sound

Reinstalling without the headset plugged in fixed the problem.

cheers,
David