I borked my perfectly good 11.2 install, while replacing a failing hard drive. I reinstalled, and now my sound doesn’t work - or not quite. I get the left front channel, nothing else. Battle Duel crashes due to sound errors - or I probably wouldn’t care.
I do notice, in the url also-info script results, that openSUSE seems to have identified the wrong m-board. I have a Biostar U8668 Grand, not the K7VT2 motherboard identified in the modprobe. The Biostar website does give some specs for the m-board:
So. From here I’m lost. I wouldn’t know how to change the m-board identification in the hardware bit, I wouldn’t know if it would make any difference if I did. I would like to get things working properly again.
I have to rush to work and do not have time now to look at all the above in detail.
Is there anything else you can tell us about this failed re-install ? From what I gather it worked before. Did you try to install/do anything else with sound? Before did you do anything special with sound?
In your mixer I note:
Simple mixer control ‘Master Mono’,0
Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined
Playback channels: Mono
Limits: Playback 0 - 31
Mono: Playback 0 [0%] -46.50dB] [off]Can you confirm turning that OFF has no effect?
Can you also confirm the physical connections in your speaker are good ?
I note this in the alsa-configuration.txt file for the via 8235 on your PC.
Module snd-via82xx
------------------
Module for AC'97 motherboards based on VIA 82C686A/686B, 8233,
8233A, 8233C, 8235, 8237 (south) bridge.
mpu_port - 0x300,0x310,0x320,0x330, otherwise obtain BIOS setup
[VIA686A/686B only]
joystick - Enable joystick (default off) [VIA686A/686B only]
ac97_clock - AC'97 codec clock base (default 48000Hz)
dxs_support - support DXS channels,
0 = auto (default), 1 = enable, 2 = disable,
3 = 48k only, 4 = no VRA, 5 = enable any sample
rate and different sample rates on different
channels
[VIA8233/C, 8235, 8237 only]
ac97_quirk - AC'97 workaround for strange hardware
See "AC97 Quirk Option" section below.
This module supports one chip and autoprobe.
Note: on some SMP motherboards like MSI 694D the interrupts might
not be generated properly. In such a case, please try to
set the SMP (or MPS) version on BIOS to 1.1 instead of
default value 1.4. Then the interrupt number will be
assigned under 15. You might also upgrade your BIOS.
Note: VIA8233/5/7 (not VIA8233A) can support DXS (direct sound)
channels as the first PCM. On these channels, up to 4
streams can be played at the same time, and the controller
can perform sample rate conversion with separate rates for
each channel.
As default (dxs_support = 0), 48k fixed rate is chosen
except for the known devices since the output is often
noisy except for 48k on some mother boards due to the
bug of BIOS.
Please try once dxs_support=5 and if it works on other
sample rates (e.g. 44.1kHz of mp3 playback), please let us
know the PCI subsystem vendor/device id's (output of
"lspci -nv").
If dxs_support=5 does not work, try dxs_support=4; if it
doesn't work too, try dxs_support=1. (dxs_support=1 is
usually for old motherboards. The correct implemented
board should work with 4 or 5.) If it still doesn't
work and the default setting is ok, dxs_support=3 is the
right choice. If the default setting doesn't work at all,
try dxs_support=2 to disable the DXS channels.
In any cases, please let us know the result and the
subsystem vendor/device ids. See "Links and Addresses"
below.
Note: for the MPU401 on VIA823x, use snd-mpu401 driver
additionally. The mpu_port option is for VIA686 chips only.
The power-management is supported.
… but none of that should be necessary to read if this once worked before. We need to see what has changed.
I don’t remember exactly how I set up 11.2 the last time - but the sound was working.
I do remember this - I went through a bunch of steps to set up flash, java and the like. If I recall, I used the one-click for multimedia and nvidia. I don’ remember doing anything special for sound.
This much changed - this time I went straight to the forum how-to multimedia checklists and used them. I didn’t use any one-clicks.
I have to wonder about the m-board bit tho - if something in hardware ID is thinking I’ve got a different m-board (both have onboard sound, and similar chipsets, but they are not identical), that alone, in my experience in the Windows/Mac world, could cause what I’m seeing. (hearing).
I did try setting the sound to mono in the sound preferences gui. All that did was to play the front left channel on all channels. Didn’t stop Battle Duel from crashing.
BTW, it might be educational - idk - but the Battle Duel error msg is:
line with format PCM UNSIGNED 8363.0 Hz, 8 bit, stereo, 2 bytes/frame, not supported. SoundManager.play
Just a mid-lo quality set of pc speakers - nothing special at all - just above rock bottom. All speakers work.
BTW - I just made a small discovery - the sound was not necessarily working completely correctly before. I just found that Banshee is working for me now - it wouldn’t play stuff before. I used mplayer etc instead. Now it plays my MP3’s. But battle duel didn’t crash, tho.
O - and when I run the command line speaker tests -
speaker-test -Dplug:surround51 -c6 -twav
speaker-test -c2 -l5 -twav
they only give me the left front channel sound - that’s why I’m saying “I’m only getting the left front channel”. Nothing else plays.
Ok - well, I’m no closer to solving this issue. It is past me. However, does anybody know how to get the system to see my correct m-board? Can I change that, or is that set in the kernel at install? If it’s set during the install, what load switch can I use with install to look closer for the correct m-board? Since the sound is on the m-board, I’m thinking that might help.