When I ran OpenSUSE 12.2, I had a couple of occasions where I lost sound. I never understood why it went or why it came back, but I think it was related to restarting following software upgrades. In any case, today I upgrades to 12.3 and faced this problem right from the start. Everything appeared fine, I was getting the static hum if I turned up the speaker volume, which would change if I played with the KMix volumes. However, I’d get not sound no matter how I tested (sound file, audio tests, YouTube, etc.). I’ve spent quite some time playing and trying to get results by following suggestions on the web, and have actually managed to make matters worse by thinking ‘it’s worth a try’ when offered a ‘remove devices’ option, resulting in KMix losing all devices - thankfully a restart seemed to recover these.
Anyway, after that nasty scare and being painfully aware that I have no idea what I’m doing, it’s time to forget everything I think I might have learned (in case it’s wrong) and ask someone if they’ll hold my hand whilst I try to fix this.
I have a TA870+ motherboard which has ALC892 7.1 channel audio out. I have a simple one-jack stereo speaker set-up. My sound configuration under YaST shows:
0 - SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) - Driver: snd-hda-intel
1 - nVidia Corporation - Driver: snd-hda-intel
Both of these are as they were under the initial installation. I’ve played with volumes under KMix and PulseAudio to no avail (other than to alter the volume of the static).
Thanks for the reply jdmcdaniel3. I’ve come across both of these before (though it was version 1.0 of S.T.A.R.T), but I found the following statement very helpful:
When you have more than one audio device, make sure to use the profile of off for the audio device you do not use.
I didn’t really understand why two audio devices were showing in my set up and just assumed that it was probably some form of artificial split of the single output device, done for reasons beyond my understanding, or need to understand. However, your comment made me re-examine this. My motherboard has integrated sound and I have no separate sound card. What I do have is a separate nVidia graphics card including HDMI output. This has led me to the revelation that my graphics card is probably channelling audio to the monitor (in case it has speakers, which it does not). Yes?
Anyway, I have now disabled the card identified as GF119 HDMI Audio Controller (which I strongly suspect is my nVidia card identified earlier) and run through the blog again.
I’ve also run through the updated version of S.T.A.R.T and this suggested adding myself to the ‘audio’ group, which I have now done. Other than that, I’ve not understood enough of what I’ve been looking at to say that there is a problem (though the following looks potentially suspicious to me):
lsof: status error on /dev/dsp*: No such file or directory
lsof: status error on /dev/audio*: No such file or directory
lsof: status error on /dev/mixer*: No such file or directory
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
pulseaudi 2841 xxxx 16u CHR 116,11 0t0 5627 /dev/snd/controlC1
pulseaudi 2841 xxxx 23u CHR 116,7 0t0 5621 /dev/snd/controlC0
pulseaudi 2841 xxxx 24u CHR 116,7 0t0 5621 /dev/snd/controlC0
Net result… no change in behaviour.
Suggestions on what to try next?
Stuart
P.S. I’m going to bed now, so will pick this up tomorrow.
If you wish a more detailed look made of your audio setup, you could with your pc connected to the internet run the diagnostic script from a terminal:
/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh
and select the UPLOAD/SHARE option and after it has fully funished running, in the terminal will be a link where the configuration was uploaded. Please copy that and paste it here in this thread. This will allow us to check your PC’s audio setup.
I next suggest we install the xfce4-mixer (Volume Control Application for the Xfce Desktop Environment) and allow it to install any supporting files. You run the program called “xfce4-mixer”, but its name is listed as just Audio Mixer. You will get something that looks like this, but with only your controls shown.
We can select any controls you have. Then start up playing music, and play with the controls, on and off, leaving things back to its original location if we get no audio by changing it.
To my surprise, when I turned on my computer this morning, the sound was working! This is despite having restarted it last night with no change in behaviour. From what I can recall, I changed nothing between the restart last night and this morning. I wonder if this could turn into the (thankfully very) intermediate problem I had with 12.2?
Anyway, I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth - I’ll leave it alone until it fails again. However, so that I have a working configuration to compare against if the problem returns, I’ve run:
Yes I would agree that a cable or other lose connection can be the culprit. In particular, hum can be an indication of a bad ground and/or bad connection. The small Stereo jacks are often the source of bad connections and inexpensive cables moved around a lot or just old can also be a problem. I have a small set of headphones I plug into the speaker output to see if audio is there and move it around in the jack to determine if a connection problem exists. I have a small stereo radio I then can plug amplified speakers into to see if they are really working. The pair (small radio and headphones) are helpful in finding audio problems outside of software and sound chipsets.