ALSA Audio stopped working in 9.04

[Urge]

Running 2.6.28.11-generic kernel & alsa 1.0.20 (manual compile) on Kubuntu 9.04. HDA Intel, AD198x Digital (IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output); I am using the S/PDIF.

Everything worked fine until I installed some bug & security updates for what I thought were non-related (to audio/alsa). After a reboot, I could only get analog audio to play normally. To get digital audio to play I had to play analog audio and then play the digital audio (play the movie) while the analog was playing. However, if I paused the movie w/ digital playback, I would have to repeat the process to get the audio back.

Then I decided to reinstall gstreamer0.10-alsa; no help. Then I reinstalled alsa-base (to switch back to 1.1 but after a reboot it still shows v1.20.

So now I'm stuck with only system sounds playing (bootup & shutdown), gmplayer gives the [AO_ALSA] Unable to find simple control 'PCM',0 error. And a check in alsamixer shows the card and chip as PulseAudio.

I think I need to blow away the alsa 1.20 but don't know how to do that...suggestions?

[marcopl]

Re: ALSA Audio stopped working in 9.04

by blow away, you mean remove the alsa packages?

then do in a terminal do 'sudo dpkg --get-selections|grep -i alsa' and see what conflicting alsa packages you have and then remove with 'sudo apt-get remove packagename'.

On my laptop ( sound ok , no spdif hware though), this is what i have for alsa and pulseaudio

sudo dpkg --get-selections|grep -i alsa

alsa-base install
alsa-utils install
bluez-alsa install
libesd-alsa0 install
libsdl1.2debian-alsa install

sudo dpkg --get-selections|grep -i pulse

gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio install
libpulse-browse0 install
libpulse0 install
libpulsecore9 install
pulseaudio install
pulseaudio-esound-compat install
pulseaudio-module-hal install
pulseaudio-module-x11 install
pulseaudio-utils install
vlc-plugin-pulse install
xmms2-plugin-pulse install

good luck