Hardware, ALSA, or Driver Issue?

ClockworkOrangev3 · 29-Jun-2008, 15:06

Here's the issue I'm currently facing: I just installed openSUSE 11.0 and I have sound, but it's "choppy," for lack of a better term. I.e., I hear sound, but it's in 0.5 sec increments: it's 0.5 sec of sound, followed by 0.5 sec of silence, followed by 0.5 sec of sound, etc. I've gone to YAST and edited the card with various settings and it's all the same result. The card is recognized, but it's all "choppy" no matter program I use to produce sound.

I had Kubuntu installed on the machine before, and it did the same thing, which is bringing me to think it's a hardware issue. I deleted all partitions when installing openSUSE 11 though. But, before that I had Fedora 9 on it and the sound worked fine. In fact, this sound card has been with me through numerous different distros and I've never had a driver issue. I think it's a Turtle brand card.

Anyway, any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

**oldcpu** · 29-Jun-2008, 22:24

Originally Posted by ClockworkOrangev3

Here's the issue I'm currently facing: I just installed openSUSE 11.0 and I have sound, but it's "choppy," for lack of a better term. I.e., I hear sound, but it's in 0.5 sec increments: it's 0.5 sec of sound, followed by 0.5 sec of silence, followed by 0.5 sec of sound, etc. I've gone to YAST and edited the card with various settings and it's all the same result. The card is recognized, but it's all "choppy" no matter program I use to produce sound.

I had Kubuntu installed on the machine before, and it did the same thing, which is bringing me to think it's a hardware issue. I deleted all partitions when installing openSUSE 11 though. But, before that I had Fedora 9 on it and the sound worked fine. In fact, this sound card has been with me through numerous different distros and I've never had a driver issue. I think it's a Turtle brand card.

Anyway, any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

You could download a live CD from a distro like Kanotix, Knoppix, or Sidux, burn the CD, boot to it, and see if your audio behaves the same.

Have you installed the package "alsa-firmware"? If not, maybe try that and reboot.

Pulse audio is known to cause a lag with the sound in some user's sound on openSUSE-11.0. To see what pulse apps you have installed, type:
rpm -qa | grep pulse
Those apps are supposed to provide enhanced sound control, but they are safe to remove, ... so you could remove them to see if you still have this sound problem. Make a note of what you remove, so you can install later if appropriate.

Its possible there is a bug in alsa with the recent openSUSE. Perhaps you could provide us with more information on you hardware. Run the following two commands, which will run diagnostic scripts to provide more information on your PC audio setup. They will each run a diagnostic script that will give you a URL that you can post here on this thread.

Code:

wget -O alsa-info.sh http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh && bash alsa-info.sh

For the next script, select NO for every question you can not answer, and enter your root password when prompted for a password.

Code:

su -c 'wget -O tsalsa wget http://home.cfl.rr.com/infofiles/tsalsa && bash tsalsa'

ClockworkOrangev3 · 30-Jun-2008, 06:48

Thanks for your reply.
The command

Code:

rpm -qa | grep pulse

returned empty. If I remember correctly, when I tried Fedora 9 I had problems with pulse, so I didn't install any pulse packages. (A bit off-topic, but the last time I tried a Fedora distro, it was Fedora Core 5 and after trying Fedora 9, it'll be a long time before I try another Fedora distro.)

Code:

wget -O alsa-info.sh http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh && bash alsa-info.sh

returned http://git.alsa-project.org/?p=alsa-...s/alsa-info.sh. (I guess that's the URL.)

Code:

su -c 'wget -O tsalsa wget http://home.cfl.rr.com/infofiles/tsalsa && bash tsalsa'

said to "paste this url in #alsa: tsalsa.txt - nopaste.com (beta)'
I did that and the line

Code:

System: Linux ubuntu 2.6.25.5-1.1-pae #1 SMP 2008-06-07 01:55:22 +0200 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

is a bit weird to me. I've reinstalled openSUSE 11.0 a few times and each time the command prompt says "brian@ubuntu:~>" which was what it said when I ran Kubuntu on the machine. I kept thinking that maybe some things were left over from my Kubuntu installation. But I opted to deleted all previous partitions on each install. Could this be it?

I'm using openSUSE 10.2 (which I love very much) on my main computer and I have the same exact sound card on that machine. The same drivers show up on both machines.

I will run Knoppix later today and see if the problem persists. I'll post the results when I do.

I do have alsa-firmware installed.

I'm a bit of a scavenger, any spare computer parts that people don't want I usually take up. So the computer in question is like a resurrected computer cemetery/orphanage. I think my motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-7N400. The sound card is a Turtle Beach, but I'm unsure of the exact model.

**oldcpu** · 30-Jun-2008, 07:34

Originally Posted by ClockworkOrangev3

Code:

wget -O alsa-info.sh http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh && bash alsa-info.sh

returned http://git.alsa-project.org/?p=alsa-...s/alsa-info.sh. (I guess that's the URL.)

No, thats not the correct URL. You are just feeding the URL of the script back to me.

... anyway, I'll take a look at the tsalsa script output, where you did provide the correct URL.

**oldcpu** · 30-Jun-2008, 07:51

Originally Posted by ClockworkOrangev3

...said to "paste this url in #alsa: tsalsa.txt - nopaste.com (beta)'
I did that and the line

I don't see anything obvious in that, although I noted you have one digital audio parameter enabled:
"amixer set 'IEC958 5V',0 on" .... is that necessary?

I note the follow alsa page guidance on your module:
Matrix:Module-cmipci - AlsaProject

Its possible there is a change we could do to your /etc/modprobe.d/sound file based on that, and test to see if such a change would help. Can you post the contents of your /etc/modprobe.d/sound file? i.e. run ...
cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound

Originally Posted by ClockworkOrangev3

Code:

System: Linux ubuntu 2.6.25.5-1.1-pae #1 SMP 2008-06-07 01:55:22 +0200 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

is a bit weird to me.

Its weird to me to. Did you do a clean install of openSUSE? Did you keep your ubuntu /home, or replace that also?

Originally Posted by ClockworkOrangev3

I kept thinking that maybe some things were left over from my Kubuntu installation. But I opted to deleted all previous partitions on each install. Could this be it?

If you made a mistake, and installed on top of your old Ubuntu config, and did not do a completely clean install, this indeed could be your problem.

Originally Posted by ClockworkOrangev3

I'm using openSUSE 10.2 (which I love very much) on my main computer and I have the same exact sound card on that machine. The same drivers show up on both machines.

I assume the sound works on one pc with no problem, and not on the other? If so, how about comparing your audio config files on both of those PCs to see what the differences might be?

**oldcpu** · 30-Jun-2008, 08:19

Originally Posted by ClockworkOrangev3

Here's the issue I'm currently facing: I just installed openSUSE 11.0

Please also confirm that was a "clean install" of 11.0 (GM-gold-mastered version), and not an update from an alpha version.

I saw a similar affect on an alpha version of 11.0 on my PC (different sound card). It was not present in the beta versions of 11.0.

ClockworkOrangev3 · 30-Jun-2008, 10:24

I could not get any sound while running Knoppix.

The command prompt now says 'brian@Knoppix:~>' when running SUSE.

I used openSUSE-11.0-DVD-i386.iso. I chose to install and during the partitioning process I opted to delete all previous partitions. The computer has two hard drives. The first time I used one for /, /home, and swap and the other time I installed I used the other drive. Each time I chose "Installation." And both times I've reformatted the partitions. What else would I do for a clean install? Should I try re-downloading and/or re-burning the DVD?

The sound works fine on my other machine.

Code:

cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound

returned: options snd slots=snd-cmipci
#2_DJ.leFtcOMtGx0:CMI8738/C3DX PCI Audio Device
alias snd-card-0 snd-cmipci

while the same code for the machine with no problems returned:
options snd-cmipci enable=1 index=0
options snd-hda-intel enable=1 index=1
# u1Nb.NJUir9jiH51:82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller
alias snd-card-1 snd-hda-intel
# YmUS.leFtcOMtGx0:CMI8738/C3DX PCI Audio Device
alias snd-card-0 snd-cmipci

<sigh>

ClockworkOrangev3 · 30-Jun-2008, 21:01

Problem solved: I put the card in a new PCI slot. (hides in embarrassment...) Thanks for your help oldpcu.

**oldcpu** · 30-Jun-2008, 22:26

Originally Posted by ClockworkOrangev3

Problem solved: I put the card in a new PCI slot.

Glad to read its working. Congratulations.

**Jonney** · 04-Jul-2008, 06:42

I'm having the exact same problem. However, it's a laptop with onboard sound so i can't change the slots. I performed a clean install of opensuse 11 and have installed the alsa-firmware package but the problem does not go away. The sound hardware is a sis si7012 with a realtek alc202. The system is using the snd-intel8x0 driver. Any ideas?