No sound with 11.4 ALC889

Hi,

I’ve just switched to 11.4 from 11.3 with zypper dup. Now I have no sound whatsoever. I had a problem getting the sound to work when I started using 11.3, but on 11.4 those exact same settings don’t work. When I try “speaker-test -Dplug:front -c2 -l5 -twav” I get no errors, but still no sound. I have a Gigabyte P55A-UD4P motherboard with intel core i7 which I have connected to stereo with optical cable. I do not even have pulseaudio installed, as that was just another headache.

Searching through the SDB, wiki, forums, etc. did not lead me to anything useful yet, but if anyone has a suggestion I would be very grateful.

Cheers!

Hi,

I’ve just switched to 11.4 from 11.3 with zypper dup. Now I have no sound whatsoever. I had a problem getting the sound to work when I started using 11.3, but on 11.4 those exact same settings don’t work. When I try “speaker-test -Dplug:front -c2 -l5 -twav” I get no errors, but still no sound. I have a Gigabyte P55A-UD4P motherboard with intel core i7 which I have connected to stereo with optical cable. I do not even have pulseaudio installed, as that was just another headache.

Searching through the SDB, wiki, forums, etc. did not lead me to anything useful yet, but if anyone has a suggestion I would be very grateful.

Cheers!
If you maintained a separate /home hard disk partition, I would try a clean install, but modify the setup to mount your home area, but to not format it. All of your personnel settings will be maintained, but you do need to reload all of your old applications. As for Audio, the new setup uses Pulseaudio by default and the Phonon GStreamer Backend. I am not sure what you end up doing with what you suggest, but it may not work. A clean install is your best bet and using the default Pulseaudio, until you know more about the new KDE 4.6 environment.

Thank You,

What DE are you running?

OS: Linux 2.6.37.1-1.2-desktop x86_64
System: openSUSE 11.4 (x86_64)
KDE: 4.6.00 (4.6.0) “release 6”

I’m hoping that there are some things I can try before doing a clean install, but thanks jdmcdaniel3.
Here is some other info which may be helpful:

:~> LC_ALL=C zypper ve Loading repository data… Reading installed packages… - Pastebin.com](http://pastebin.com/6P8gT9ps)

There are changes in the openSUSE audio setup between 11.3 and 11.4. Before attempting a re-install, I recommend you give ‘pavucontrol’ a try. Install that application. Then run it with ‘pavucontrol’ and see if you can tune in your audio.

Are there any dependencies for that app which zypper doesn’t automatically install? When I try to run it (after reboot) I get the pop-up error “Connection failed. Connection refuse.” Even with root privileges.

No dependencies. It just works. …

Did you disable pulse ? If you did that might explain it.

Edit - I see you did disable:

I suppose you know there is a possibility that your activity removing/disabling pulse could have brought this about.

I just installed pulse, and I think I have it enabled, but still no sound at all. How do I proceed from here?

It could be the digital output is muted (you said you are using optical cable).
Have a look in the mixer that you are using
Please post more information about your sound set-up.

Sorry, but I’m not super familiar with all of the various settings and apps. Could you be more specific about what to check, and what information you need.

I apologize.
If using kde you must have kmix
If using gnome you must have gmixer
If using xfce you must have xfce4- mixer

Those aplications, in their preferences you can add control and mute/un-mute and adjust the volumes of your sound system

No worries.
I’m using KDE. The two options I have in kMix (Redwood HDMI Digital Stereo & Internal Audio Digital Stereo (IEC958)) are both unmuted. I prefer to use the optical cable plugged directly into the motherboard out.

Is it working now?
Be sure to enable the IEC958

Sorry. Still no sound, nothing since I changed to 11.4. The IEC958 is enabled in kmix. Are there other places that I need to enable it too, or does kmix take care of that for me?

Try the pavucontrol which oldcpu told you, I forgot to mention it on my last post.
In the terminal try this

aplay -l

and repost the output
One of my installed 11.4 has pulseaudio enabled and am using the pavucontrol and xfce-mxer because I am using xfce.

I do have pavucontrol, but after playing around with the settings, I still am unable to get sound on any output.

:~> aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC889 Analog [ALC889 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC889 Digital [ALC889 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0


It looks like you are using the
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC889 Digital [ALC889 Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Can you look for it in the pavucontrol configuration
I am not using that setup I am using HDMI so there is difference and can’t compare with yours.
On top of that, first time I use this pulseaudio. If you have the alsamixer installed can you check if S/PDIF is muted or not? In alsamixer press F6 to choose the soundcard.

In pavucontrol all I can find in the Redwood HDMI audio (from video card) and “Internal Audio Digital Stereo (IEC958).” Those are the only two options that I see, I’m guessing the latter is hopefully the device I want. Both are unmuted, and I’m unable to get sound. I have the IEC958 preferred (I think, it’s new to me as well).

I just checked again in alsamixer, and S/PDIF is not muted.

I’m not sure if this will work for you
This is the configuration to enable my hdmi to work with pulseaudo. Actually hdmi works with pulseaudio here in mplayer, audacious, and smplayer but parole and flash only plays with the analog onboard card. So searching everywhere I found this to work with my setup. We will try to adopt this if you won’t mind but not sure if it will work.

In /etc/pulse/default.pa as su
add this:

### Load digital device
load-module module-alsa-sink device=hw:0,1

Reboot your computer and test your sound. If still will not work
In /etc as su create a file and name it asound.conf and paste this

pcm.!default digital:Intel
pcm:iec958 digital:Intel

logout and log in

This procedure is modified to suit yours I replace hdmi from my config to your digital device.

Good luck

I just tried both of those, to no avail unfortunately. I assume I should undo both, unless you know of some reason not to. Are there any other settings or hardware info that would be helpful, other that what I’ve already posted?