Have sound, but play test sound doesn't work.

English Hardware
1

Hello,

I had installed openSUSE 11.1 recently and the first time it booted up, it complained saying something to the effect that the sound might not work. And for a while, indeed I had no sound.

I downloaded am mp3 file and tried to play it using the Banshee player. I had no sound. I tried some thing I found on google. Essentially, I added a line to some config file that goes something like: “options…”

I restarted and everything. Still no sound. I finally thought I’d post here today. But just today, I wanted to test once more and may be follow some trouble shooting steps before I inconvenience the good people on the forums.

But, when I played the mp3 file… magic… I had sound. I could hear everything. I quickly went to the Yast>Hardware>Sound and even increased the volume to 100%. Everything seemed fine and dandy.

Then, I thought… let me play the test sound. So, I clicked on the Other>Play test sound… nothing. I choose Other>Volume and them clicked on the test button… nothing.

So now, I have sound. But the play test sound function seems to not work.

So I have 2 questions:

  1. How did the sound suddenly and mysteriously start working after a few reboot cycles?
  2. Why is the play test sound not working?

Someone had asked me to type the command: lspci -v and provide the output. So here it is: (Even though, there’s a lot more, I’m only providing what I think is relevant. Please let me know if you need more or something else)

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30f7
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22
Memory at dc500000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16]
Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [60] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ Count=1/1 Enable+
Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel <?>
Capabilities: [130] Root Complex Link <?>
Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

I would really appreciate any help.

Thank you very much in advance.[/size]

2

I’ve just tried the command line thing from the audio trouble shooting documentation:

speaker-test -Dplug:front -c2 -l5 -twav

speaker-test 1.0.18

Playback device is plug:front
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
WAV file(s)
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 64 to 16384
Period size range from 32 to 8192
Using max buffer size 16384
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 4096
was set buffer_size = 16384
0 - Front Left
^C

Had to press ctrl+c as I was hearing nothing.

3

There is an audio troubleshooting guide here for sound:
SDB:AudioTroubleshooting - openSUSE

There is a bug in YaST’s sound test and it does not work for all hardware. The speaker-test you tried also does not work for all hardware. Did you try this test (from the above troubleshooting guide):
speaker-test -c2 -l5 -twav

Another sound test (from the alsa site) is here:
SoundcardTesting - AlsaProject

If you wish us to take a more detailed look at your PC’s audio configuration, you could post the output URL from a diagnostic script. If using openSUSE-11.1, you can do that, with your PC connected to the internet, by opening a gnome-terminal or a kde konsole and typing “su” (no quotes - enter root password) and then and typing and executing twice :
/usr/sbin/alsa-info.shthe first time it will ask to update. Select YES for the update. The second time that will run a diagnostic script and post the output to a web site on the Internet. It will give you the URL of the web site. Please post that URL here. JUST the URL.

Also provide the output of:
rpm -qa | grep alsa
rpm -qa | grep pulse
rpm -q libasound2
uname -a

Now reference multimedia players, in the case of openSUSE please note that open in openSUSE. Note the emphasis on “open”. This references to the philosophy followed since openSUSE-10.1, where an effort is being made not to include support for proprietary drivers, nor proprietary codecs in the openSUSE distribution. Instead openSUSE tries to follow an open source free software philsophy. Most audio and video codecs are proprietary, which means most audio and video is NOT supported on a newly installed openSUSE installation. Instead one must add 3rd party supported packaged to make this possible. Fortunately this is easy to do.

The way to do this is to set up your Software Package Management with 4 and ONLY 4 repositories. Just 4. No others. IMHO others should only be added briefly if and when required, and then removed afterward. Those 4 to include are OSS, Non-OSS, Update and Packman. Again just those 4. Remove any others. There is guidance here on how to add those 4: Repositories/11.1 - openSUSE-Community Again OSS, Non-OSS, Update and packman (its possible the 1st 3 are already setup and you only need to add packman). Again, remove others. When you learn more about dependency problems and how having the wrong rpms can cause problems, AND you learn how to fix the problems, then you can add more. Until then, stick with the 4. In particular, do NOT add videolan.

Now once those 4 are added, go to YaST > Software > Software Management and change “filter” to “search” and search for and install Packman packaged versions of the following (replacing any Novell/SuSE-GmbH crippled versions): amarok, amarok-xine, amarok-plugin, libxine1, xine-ui, smplayer, mplayerplug-in, vlc, libffmpeg0, ffmpeg, w32codec-all, libquicktime0, xvidcore, libxvidcore4. You can tell packman packaged versions by the “pm” in the version number.

That should get you started. In amarok, change the sound engine to xine.

4

Hello oldcpu,

Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed response. I really appreciate it. I have gone through the steps you had recommended and here are the results:

[ol]
[li]The command ‘speaker-test -c2 -l5 -twav’ works. But the voice I hear is kinda like it’s breaking up. It goes:[/li]F… f… front… ont… ont… lef… lef… left… t… t… Is this normal?

[li]ALSA URL: http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=fd870124de442ed5c13b8e2ac3289eb887ebfb81[/li]
[li]I have added the packman repository and have ‘disabled’ another repository not in the 4 you had recommended.[/li]
[li]Here is the output for the several commands you had asked for:[/li]@-opensuse:~> rpm -qa | grep alsa
alsa-oss-32bit-1.0.17-1.37
alsa-oss-1.0.17-1.43
alsa-1.0.18-8.9
alsa-utils-1.0.18-6.4
alsa-devel-1.0.18-8.9
alsa-plugins-1.0.18-6.13
alsa-plugins-pulse-1.0.18-6.13
@-opensuse:~> rpm -qa | grep pulse
pulseaudio-module-bluetooth-0.9.12-9.5
libxine1-pulse-1.1.15-23.3.3
pulseaudio-module-x11-0.9.12-9.5
pulseaudio-module-gconf-0.9.12-9.5
libpulsecore4-0.9.12-9.5
pulseaudio-module-zeroconf-0.9.12-9.5
libpulse0-0.9.12-9.5
libpulse-browse0-0.9.12-9.5
pulseaudio-0.9.12-9.5
pulseaudio-esound-compat-0.9.12-9.5
libpulse-mainloop-glib0-0.9.12-9.5
pulseaudio-utils-0.9.12-9.5
pulseaudio-module-jack-0.9.12-9.5
libpulse0-32bit-0.9.12-9.6
alsa-plugins-pulse-1.0.18-6.13
pulseaudio-module-lirc-0.9.12-9.5
@-opensuse:~> rpm -q libasound2
libasound2-1.0.18-8.9
vijay@vijay-opensuse:~> uname -a
Linux vijay-opensuse 2.6.27.21-0.1-default #1 SMP 2009-03-31 14:50:44 +0200 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
@-opensuse:~>

[li]I searched for and installed the packages you had recommended. But I did encounter some problems.[/li][LIST=1]
[li]Two or three packages complained something about dependencies. I remember seeing something like ‘these cannot be provided.’[/li][li]Could not find ‘amoarok-plugin’[/li][li]Instead of libxine1 I found a whole bunch of packages with libxine1-xxx naming convention. I installed them all.[/li][li]Instead of smpplayer, I found smplayer. I installed that.[/li][li]Instead of mplayerplugin-in, I found mplayerplug-in. I installed that.[/li][li]Finally, you said “In amarok, change the sound engine to xine.” I did not understand that. Can you please tell me how to do that or direct me to the appropriate documentation?[/li][/ol]
[li]ALSA URL after package installations: http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=f2f5f3e127bf8e73ed6f679d552093e8b75a7126[/li][/LIST]

Please let me know if you need anything else.

Thank you very much again.

5

This was a mistake of mine. I should have typed ‘amarok-packman’.

likely only libxine1 and xine-ui are necessary. But if you wish to read up more about the others, you can go here and check out the links: PackMan :: Informationen zum Paket xine-lib

more typos.

Amarok > Settings > Configure Amarok > Engine > sound system

6

No. Do you have the same choppy sound problem with other sound? I suspect the answer is YES you have the same choppy sound elsewhere.

Ok thanks. I see a 64-bit openSUSE-11.1 with the latest 2.6.27.21 kernel and an IDT 92HD71B7X hardware audio codec with the 1.0.17/1.0.18 alsa. Frankly, I am surprised you get any sound at all. With that hardware audio audio codec ( IDT 92HD71B7X ) I believe you need to update to the latest alsa.

There is guidance here on how to do that:
Alsa-update - openSUSE

You need to send 6 zypper commands. You problably should “tune” the zypper command (in the example commands given) to match the alsa apps that you have installed so as to update them all to 1.0.19 git version of alsa. Note you must also install alsa-drive-kmp-default in addition to the update of your alsa apps.

If you find that guide confusing and if you wish, I can provide you the exact six commands to send.

If you still have choppy sound after rebooting after that update, then we need to look at ways to work around possible pulse audio glitches and/or tune the recognition of your audio hardware by alsa.