No audio except in flash

I was having some trouble with flash before - seemingly, starting last.fm would suddenly make all youtube videos completely silent, even after the closing of the application. So, I updated flash to no avail. I did the one-click media codec install instead to see if it would help. Now flash sound works, but all of my desktop sound applications are broken. Ncmpcpp won’t unpause music. Rythmbox plays music (as in the seek bar moves), but there is no sound. It also seems that gnome-3 doesn’t see my audio hardware in the sound settings. Any idea on what I can do about this?

I should clarify. The sound settings menu that is integrated into gnome doesn’t seem to see any hardware in the hardware tab. YaST can still see my audio device just fine (yes, it is set as the primary). The test sound does not play.

When you state all desktop sound applications are broken, which applications specifically are you referring to ? I know this is obvious to you, but its not to me.

If you have not done so already, I recommend you use the application pulse audio volume control (pavucontrol - which should be installed already on your gnome setup - if not install it) and tune each application for pulse using that pauvcontrol. I made a blog entry on this: Pulseaudio Basics for openSUSE with pavucontrol - Blogs - openSUSE Forums

When I said all desktop applications are broken, I meant the aforementioned Rythmbox and Ncmpcpp (and therefore MPD) were not functioning. Also, pavucontrol doesn’t have any devices listed in the configuration tab.

This reads to me to be gnome-3 specific. I think you will need a gnome-3 user to chime in here.

I’m no Linux expert, but my hunch is that it’s alsa-related.


alden@rava-149:~> arecord -l
arecord: device_list:244: no soundcards found...

The sound driver doesn’t seem to be finding my card.

On 2012-02-07 07:16, oldcpu wrote:

> This reads to me to be gnome-3 specific. I think you will need a
> gnome-3 user to chime in here.

He says that yast test sound doesn’t work. I would start there, that’s
kernel related.

AladdinP: try a new user.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

AladdinP: try a new user.

There is no sound in the new user account, either.

If sound works initially during a boot (which you stated it does) then its most unlikely it will then ‘lose’ your sound card.

You have totally confused me. That first post reads to me that sound works in some apps. What is it ? No sound ? Or some sound.

My apologies. Sound ONLY works in flash player. So I do have some sound. In the new user account, like my primary account, there is no sound in any application besides flash.

IF sound works in Flash, then your alsa sound driver is working. The alsa sound driver does not randomly work for some apps and not for others. It either (1) works, or (2) does not work.

Its most likely now this is a configuration issue. A configuration issue with pulse audio. Or a configuration issue with each application. Or a configuration issue with Gnome-3 desktop.

Ergo the problem is not your sound driver not functioning.

Now before pulse audio, it was reasonably common that an application would seize the audio device and refuse to share it with other applications. But by using pulse audio in all applications, then all applications can share the audio device. Now I know NOTHING about Rythmbox and Ncmpcpp (but if they do not use pulse audio, then when pulse is using the audio device (for flash player) it is unlikely that those applications will also be able to use the audio device. You need to find a way to configure those applications to use pulse audio (or remove pulse audio - which I do not recommend).

Its also possible the Gnome-3 desktop has thrown a wrench into this as well, which would not surprise me given some of the other difficult to understand horror stories coming out about Gnome-3. But a Gnome-3 user would need to address THAT and not I.

If you run pavucontrol, BEFORE you run any other application, the configure tab SHOULD show your audio device.

If you wish to have confidence that your audio device is configured, you can run the alsa diagnostic script that should give you a warm fuzzy feeling that your audio device is configured (and it should be configured if sound is coming from flash). You can run that script with the command (with pc connected to internet):


/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

Return of alsa-info.sh:

cat: /proc/asound/version: No such file or directory
grep: /proc/asound/cards: No such file or directory
cat: /proc/asound/cards: No such file or directory
cat: /proc/asound/modules: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access /dev/snd/*: No such file or directory
grep: /proc/asound/cards: No such file or directory
/usr/sbin/alsactl: save_state:1519: No soundcards found...
cat: /tmp/alsa-info.osqg63563w/alsactl.tmp: No such file or directory

Strangely enough, I do not have a warm fuzzy feeling after running that.

Here’s a dump of alsa-info:


upload=true&script=true&cardinfo=
!!################################
!!ALSA Information Script v 0.4.60
!!################################

!!Script ran on: Tue Feb  7 21:36:33 UTC 2012


!!Linux Distribution
!!------------------

Welcome to openSUSE 12.1 "Asparagus" - Kernel \r (\l). openSUSE 12.1 (x86_64) NAME=openSUSE PRETTY_NAME="openSUSE 12.1 (Asparagus) (x86_64)" ID=opensuse


!!DMI Information
!!---------------

Manufacturer:      BIOSTAR Group
Product Name:      TA785GE 128M
Product Version:


!!Kernel Information
!!------------------

Kernel release:    3.1.9-1.4-desktop
Operating System:  GNU/Linux
Architecture:      x86_64
Processor:         x86_64
SMP Enabled:       Yes


!!ALSA Version
!!------------

Driver version:
Library version:
Utilities version:  1.0.24.2


!!Loaded ALSA modules
!!-------------------



!!Sound Servers on this system
!!----------------------------

Pulseaudio:
      Installed - Yes (/usr/bin/pulseaudio)
      Running - Yes

Jack:
      Installed - Yes (/usr/bin/jackd)
      Running - No


!!Soundcards recognised by ALSA
!!-----------------------------



!!PCI Soundcards installed in the system
!!--------------------------------------

00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Juniper HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5700 Series]


!!Advanced information - PCI Vendor/Device/Subsystem ID's
!!--------------------------------------------------------

00:14.2 0403: 1002:4383
        Subsystem: 1565:8218
--
01:00.1 0403: 1002:aa58
        Subsystem: 1682:aa58


!!Loaded sound module options
!!--------------------------


!!ALSA Device nodes
!!-----------------



!!Aplay/Arecord output
!!------------

APLAY

aplay: device_list:244: no soundcards found...

ARECORD

arecord: device_list:244: no soundcards found...

!!Amixer output
!!-------------


!!Alsactl output
!!-------------

--startcollapse--
--endcollapse--


!!All Loaded Modules
!!------------------

Module
af_packet
ip6t_LOG
xt_tcpudp
xt_pkttype
ipt_LOG
xt_limit
vmsync
vmblock
oss_usb
oss_hdaudio
osscore
ip6t_REJECT
nf_conntrack_ipv6
nf_defrag_ipv6
ip6table_raw
xt_NOTRACK
ipt_REJECT
iptable_raw
iptable_filter
ip6table_mangle
nf_conntrack_netbios_ns
nf_conntrack_broadcast
nf_conntrack_ipv4
nf_defrag_ipv4
ip_tables
xt_conntrack
nf_conntrack
ip6table_filter
ip6_tables
x_tables
cpufreq_conservative
cpufreq_userspace
cpufreq_powersave
powernow_k8
mperf
microcode
fuse
sr_mod
cdrom
ata_generic
usblp
pata_atiixp
uvcvideo
sg
videodev
v4l2_compat_ioctl32
fglrx
pcspkr
k10temp
sp5100_tco
edac_core
edac_mce_amd
i2c_piix4
floppy
r8169
wmi
button
autofs4
thermal
processor
thermal_sys


!!ALSA/HDA dmesg
!!------------------

   17.749871] boot.quota[765]: ..done
   17.886413] alsactl[813]: /usr/sbin/alsactl: load_state:1625: No soundcards found...
   17.919025] logger[836]: Requesting microcode for AMD fam10h or newer CPU(s)

And, for the record, although my GPU supports HDMI, I’m not using it. Also, since aplay -l returns “no sound cards found…”, all of this seems to point to a driver issue. This is only hearsay, but I did read somewhere that Flash has its own default sound driver it uses if it can’t find the system’s sound driver.

I added gstreamer-properties to my desktop and did the sound tests in that. The sound test plays fine in OSS and OSS4, but none of the other options. Since both are present, is it possible there’s a conflict with alsa?

That script is quite clear. No sound cards found. Ergo you are correct - alsa is not configured.

It makes no sense to me that flash sound would work. But if you hear sound from flash that is proper sound, then I can’t dispute that - I can only say it makes no sense to me and is new to me.

So then lets try and fix your sound card configuration with the alsa sound driver. In cases like this I prefer to know the hardware audio codec on your Biostar TA785GE 128M. Unfortunately the script was not able to detect that. So I did a search on Google for “TA785GE 128M alsa” and discovered other users with a problem that sound did not work. I noted a Ubuntu bug report with a purported work around: Bug #660293 “[Realtek ALC662 rev1] PA test tone failed (alsa ton...” : Bugs : pulseaudio package : Ubuntu where they suggest using the model option “6stack-dig” (which suggests the hardware audio codec in your PC could be a AD1988/AD1988B/AD1989A/AD1989B ).

So I recommend you go to YaST > Hardware > Sound, and delete your sound card (if present). Then go to /etc/modprobe.d/ and backup the 50-sound.conf file (if present) to /home/yourusername. Do NOT put backups in /etc/modprobe.d directory as they will not be treated as backups, but they will be loaded. Then go back to YaST > Hardware > Sound and try to configure your sound card. That should recreate the /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf file and hopefully that will work.

If that does not work, add the following line to the front of the /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf file and reboot:


options snd-hda-intel model=6stack-dig

and then test.

Thats the ‘ubuntu’ bug report fix, and I find >50% of the time Ubuntu fixes are simply wrong and not fixes, but every now and then one gets lucky.

Did you install OSS drivers ? They do NOT come with openSUSE nominally. openSUSE is NOT set up to run with OSS nominally, but rather alsa driver offers an OSS emulation mode.

I removed the sound card from YaST as you instructed, but when I try to add it using either quick or normal setup, I get this message:


An error occurred during the installation of SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)

The kernel module snd-hda-intel for sound support could not be loaded. This can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.

(as you may be able to imagine, now I have no sound at all)

Is there an /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf file ?

I missed the answer to this question.

Yes. Contents of /etc/modprove.d/50-sound.conf:

  1 
  2 options snd slots=snd-hda-intel
  3 # NXNs.f_IHQsSLNlA:ATI Technologies Inc
  4 alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel

I did back up my 50-sound.conf in my /home as you requested as well.

I missed the answer to this question.

Didn’t see that second post, sorry. Yes, I did attempt to switch to OSS when I was having some flash audio problems, after which I lost all sound. That’s the point where I did the one-click multimedia installation that I mentioned during the first post, which brought me to the point in which I had sound in flash but nothing else. I can certainly see how meddling with OSS could have broken something.