Hi guys,
First of all, i think i’ve read to every post/thread somewhat relating to my problem, but could not find a solution.
I recently bought a HTPC (MSI E350IA-E45) which features a ALC887 audio chip.
Using Opensuse 11.4 and KDE i found that Kmix only shows me a ‘dummy output’. Looking further i notice that; 2 cards are greyed out in audio config (Internal Audio Analog Stereo and Internal Audio Digital Stereo (HDMI)) and only ‘green/selectable’ output is the dummy output.
icebox:/etc/modprobe.d # cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [Generic ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
HD-Audio Generic at 0xfeb44000 irq 44
1 [SB ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI SB
HDA ATI SB at 0xfeb40000 irq 16
alsa-info shows me:
http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=6ef37a41593e199e57fd86f16d14c820aa1473de
I’m lost. Playing the audio file that comes with amarok gives no errors, but no sound either (as i understand thats exactly what ‘dummy output’ would produce, nothing). I’m using the optical toslink to test, have no other cables/audio set around, so that’ll have to do.
oh; by reading through forums and changing 50-sound.conf, this is what that now looks like;
icebox:/etc/modprobe.d # cat /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf
options snd-hda-intel probe_mask=1 model=auto
options snd slots=snd-hda-intel,snd-hda-intel
# mnDB.m5aRAQFNgr9:ATI Technologies Inc
alias snd-card-1 snd-hda-intel
# 5Dex.l4zMn0jSnfD:SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
Any idea’s as to why i can’t select a proper audio device? as far as i can tell alsa is correctly detecting the card, yet somehow not ‘enabling’ it or whatever. Help would be much appreciated! 
Regards,
Ice
P.S.
Just noticed; first actual post here !
That proves how handy the search function is, and how few real errors suse has given me that last few years
What kind of Audio Output are you using and to what type of speakers do you connect? Possible Outputs: Analog Stereo, Optical, Coax, HDMI Audio - To Sound Device: Analog Speakers, Receiver, TV, Amplified 5.1 Speakers. Most people USE Analog Out To Analog Speakers, but I use an Optical out of my HTPC to my Receiver for 5.1 Dolby Digital, but I get Stereo out as well. In the case of your sound devices, you show two. I do not know which one you are using, but you can change the default by going to YaST / Hardware / Sound, make sure both are configured and then with the Other button, you can designate either card as being the default or “0” card which is used by most programs in openSUSE.
Thank You,
As stated, im using the Optical toslink to connect to my 5.1 reciever (Logitech Z-5500 to be more precise).
What i can tell from the 2 cards that can be found, is that 1 is for the HDMI (hence ‘ATI’) and the other one (i reckon)is the realtek ALC887. The latter is the one I want to use.
Also, there is not ‘sound’ option in Yast… It has been there. But trying to ‘fix’ this problem, I might have ‘broken’ it some more.
While editing 50-sound.conf and restarting with ‘rcalsasound restart’, I got a popup when opening sound devices stating that there were 2 cards, that were no longer in use, so they should be removed. Now, after working on this problem for a while i figured that removing them, and then rebooting, they should be detected again… The cards could be found in /proc/asound/cards again, but the sound option had dissapeared.
Thanks so far,
Ice
In general, you should not be uninstalling applications to get your sound running, If you run YaST / Software / Software Management and search on sound, you should find a package called yast2-sound. If not installed any longer, then put a check back on it and allow it to be installed. Make sure the sound device you want to use is set as sound device “0”. Optical output is good and does work. By default, Pulseaudio is installed and enabled to work. The Pulse Audio Volume control program is called pavucontrol. Make sure that the package pavucontrol is installed and then run it. The Configuration TAB shows the output device you have selected. And the Output TAB can be used to control it. I have also found that if I install the XFCE desktop from YaST, I can use the xfce-mixer, which presents the mixer controls in a fashion you may find more understandable and the mixer package xfce-mixer works just fine in KDE or GNOME when you have installed XFCE.
Thank You,
Thank you James,
Unfortunately, my remote desktop has also seized to work, so im doing this all through putty right now. yast2-sound was indeed not installed, weird, it always was and can’t seem to recall uninstalling it, however, option is back now, so thats good. Sound also finds the 2 audio cards and the Azalia (the one i want) is set as 0. pulseaudio is indeed installed, pavucontrol wasn’t, is now. But the latter required and X environment, which I dont have right now.
also installed the xfce-mixer + dependencies. Again, they require an X environment, which I’ll try to fix in the meantime.
However, the Kmix control i have been using so far, stated there was only 1 sound device; dummy output. To my understanding pavucontrol/xfce-mixer will therefor show me the same? If the cards are not detected as output devices by Kmix, why will they be so by pavucontrol/xfce-mixer?
Ill keep you updated;
Ice
Thank you James,
Unfortunately, my remote desktop has also seized to work, so im doing this all through putty right now. yast2-sound was indeed not installed, weird, it always was and can’t seem to recall uninstalling it, however, option is back now, so thats good. Sound also finds the 2 audio cards and the Azalia (the one i want) is set as 0. pulseaudio is indeed installed, pavucontrol wasn’t, is now. But the latter required and X environment, which I dont have right now.
also installed the xfce-mixer + dependencies. Again, they require an X environment, which I’ll try to fix in the meantime.
However, the Kmix control i have been using so far, stated there was only 1 sound device; dummy output. To my understanding pavucontrol/xfce-mixer will therefor show me the same? If the cards are not detected as output devices by Kmix, why will they be so by pavucontrol/xfce-mixer?
Ill keep you updated;
Ice
Well there can be a real issue if you are running in a terminal session all of the time as many programs only work in a GUI desktop. I only use the KDE GUI desktop and not even sure what to recommend to you, but I am certain that the environment you selected may be missing some important audio components to get sound working as you have already found. I am thinking you did not uninstall these programs, but rather they were not installed to start with. Is there any reason for not using X that I have missed or do not understand about your setup?
Thank You,
Since this is an HTPC the idea was to connect to it only through putty, or when a GUI was needed, remote desktop. Im controlling the box through my windows PC.
Right now I have it hooked up directly though, since remote wasn’t working and X was needed. The box will be used for streaming and downloading (deluge with web-ui for instance) and for that one doesn’t need X
Right now, im logged in directly. And to my surprise, sound does seem to work. That is;
- Kmix allows me to select a different output device.
- I can only choose between “Internal Audio Digital Stereo (HDMI)” and “Internal Audio Digital Stereo (IEC958)”…
- HDMI works, my tv (to which its hooked up using hdmi) works. Test sounds are played.
- Im using an episode of House to test in Kaffeine.
- When using pavucontrol I can select the IEC958 option, but then no sound is played.
In pavucontrol I have 2 internal audio cards.
1st is the hdmi, and second I can select a wiiide range of options (analog surround, stereo, etc.) But none suggest it being the ‘optical s/pdif’ one.
there’s 2 ‘digitals’ in the list: “Digital Stereo (IEC958) Output + Analog Stereo Input” and “Digital Stereo Duplex (IEC958)”.
Tryin
so:
HDMI works fine, digital optical doesn’t. none of the options produce any noise.
I’ve turned HDMI off, so it would automatically use the other output device.
Big Edit:
I broke it :<
In Yast → Sound, i tried setting the ATI/HDMI as card0, since that produced test sound over my speakers as well. Appearantly its not that 2nd card i want to use, but its the first.
But setting that as card0, and then pressing next gave an error: “sound system must be restarted” (along those lines, not sure) and when pressing “ok go restart it”, kde crash handler came up. Sound no longer works.
Again, I have only the dummy output in Kmix and Pavucontrol shows “No cards available for configuration” at the configuration Tab… This is weird 
cat /proc/asound/cards now gives “— no soundcards —”…
Ice
Couldn’t edit my post
Also, restarting the alsasound with:
icebox:~ # rcalsasound restart
Shutting down sound driver done
Starting sound driver: hda-intelFATAL: Error inserting snd_hda_intel (/lib/modules/2.6.37.6-0.5-desktop/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-intel.ko): Invalid argument
hda-intelFATAL: Error inserting snd_hda_intel (/lib/modules/2.6.37.6-0.5-desktop/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-intel.ko): Invalid argument
now gives that error? It never gave an error before…
Ok, so whatever i broke, i fixed it again too ^^
Sound is working, YAY! Those last errors had something to do with the 50-sound.conf file, “probe_mask=1” was something that wasn’t allowed in there, i guess. thats what reading the ‘alsa-info.sh’ log gave me
Ok, well, thanks! I’m getting the hang of fiddling around with linux, just needed some pointers in how to fix stuff i break every once in a while
Now it’s time to fix the remote desktop thing again, and this machine is good to go!
Any tips on a remote desktop that acts like the windows one? (krdp only works by invitation, and xrdc just stopped working too). I want to have 1 session at all times, no more. Xrdc keeps making new sessions which clogs up the machine after a few timeouts etc. So thats no good, really.
thanks for taking your time James,
Ice
Ok, so whatever i broke, i fixed it again too ^^
Sound is working, YAY! Those last errors had something to do with the 50-sound.conf file, “probe_mask=1” was something that wasn’t allowed in there, i guess. thats what reading the ‘alsa-info.sh’ log gave me
Ok, well, thanks! I’m getting the hang of fiddling around with linux, just needed some pointers in how to fix stuff i break every once in a while
Now it’s time to fix the remote desktop thing again, and this machine is good to go!
Any tips on a remote desktop that acts like the windows one? (krdp only works by invitation, and xrdc just stopped working too). I want to have 1 session at all times, no more. Xrdc keeps making new sessions which clogs up the machine after a few timeouts etc. So thats no good, really.
thanks for taking your time James,
Ice
You are very welcome for the help IceDustbin. And really, most of your fixes came from self help which is the best kind. lol!
Now I also have a HTPC setup, connected to my TV (DVI to HDMI) and an optical connection straight to my Receiver. I am running openSUSE 11.3 on it (Because it works fine) and use Kaffeine/KDE 3 to play back movies. I use the KDE desktop and since it does connect to a TV, I see no reason to attempt to remote control it at all so I am not much of an expert of that front. I have loaded all of the sound Utilities and programs I want including the ability to rip an Audio CD if needed (I use Asunder) on this computer. I also added XMBC which does permit audio streaming, but I just have not used that feature all that much. I mainly use it to play movies. In fact, I will be watching something again tonight as the wife and I really like seeing first run movies on DVD. Any way, each to their own and good luck with your setup.
I would suggest that you start a new thread and ask for help in remote control of a PC and solicit suggestions and how to’s on the subject. That is what I would do if set on using my HTPC that way.
Thank You,
My HTPC is also used as a NAS, and the tv is used for my pc as well (its just a big monitor with a few more connections on it xD). So I dont always ahve the screen free, nor the place for mouse and keyboard, to use the PC as a PC… thus; remote desktop. I will open a thread for that in the coming week or so.
Self help = self study/learning, right at least, i learned alot from this I use Suse 11.4 because i just wanted to create a new usb stick (bootable) and 11.4 was the one opensuse.org offered me… Been using suse since SLES9/10…, so suse was the one for me, didn’t care about version (altough i still seem to like KDE3 more then 4, but hey ;))
I still have to look into the PMS (PS3 Media Server) and XMBC software etc. No dvd/cd-player in this thing so thats not an issue, but movies seem to play nice (at least the SD ones, still have to check HD).
Right now; this box does Torrenting, SD video playback with surround sound, Normal Data storage (12TB FTW!), music playback, and as soon as my bluetooth set comes in i have a keyboard and mouse so can use it as regular pc too (well, the GF mainly, probably xD).
Again; thanks for your help, you did give me a few pointers and idea’s. Actually, you did too in the other threads i looked for in the first place 
Ice