Hi I just installed OpenSuse 11.2 on my second PC for use as a HTPC. I have attached the PC by Optical out line to an amplifier for 5.1 sound. Only problem is that I cannot get any sound out of this set up. I notice that the default for Suse 11.2 is Alsa 1.0.21 but my version is Alsa 1.0.20. I have tried to update using both the Yast and zypper 2x3 commands but I have been unable to update Alsa. Please advise on how I can get sound to play.Here is my detailed Alsa info: http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=214331204ed37412996d7e2f4093fa8ca0c067bd
Strange things are happening now. After a long time tweaking things. I have flashplayer in Firefox working sometimes but then Amarok doesn’t work.Or I get Amarok to play audio and then flashplayer no longer works. SMplayer has never worked.
1st) My system is confused between two sound cards (or at least two cards are showing up because I only have a Gigabyte motherboard with Digital Home Theater).
2nd) I am unable to configure my surround sound correctly.
In light of this realization, I will post two new threads respectively.
Setting up my Realtek ALC883 for digital output and getting it to stay that way was a complete nightmare on 11.1
I found 11.2 much easier to configure. My alsa version is 1.0.21-3.2. Have you configured any repositories?
Are you using gnome or kde? I’m only familiar with Gnome.
Right click the volume control on the gnome panel and choose sound preferences (or find Sound in the Control Centre).
Select your preferred Output sound device then choose a profile.
Mine does not seem to have the option of simultaneous analog and digital output now but that doesn’t particularly bother me.
Don’t be tempted to do everything that is suggested (like loading the alsa package from the realtek site for example) it just confuses the issue. Also take care not to ignore dependency warnings when loading packages (apologies if you’re not as new as I am. I learned this the hard way).
After doing SDB:AudioTroubleshooting - openSUSE
and toggling the two sound cards. I am able to get all of my media players, flash, system sound, etc. to work. Problem is they don’t always stay that way. It also seems that some applications particularly Amarok “break” my audio causing flash, SMPlayer to stop playback of audio. Also when I toggle the two driver settings and log in and out I am constantly getting the message that my HDA ATI SB, ALC 889A Digital (IEC958(S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output) does not work and it rolls back to others namely Pusle Audio. Also please see the results of the following tests:
speaker-test -Dplug:front -c2 -l5 -twav
Konsole test runs but no sound coming from any speakers
speaker-test -c6 -Dplug:surround51 -t wav -l1
Konsole test runs but no sound coming from any speakers
Note that Linux has had a history of applications not sharing the sound device. This is true for most of the sound servers and daemons in Linux. Which means only one application at a time will be able to play sound with most of the different sound servers and sound daemons. As well often when an application has the sound device, when it closes it may, or it may not, let go of the sound device. When it does not let go of the sound device, all sound is broken until the sound server/daemon is restarted by restarting alsa. Or in other cases when one application (1st) has the sound device and another application (2nd) seizes the sound device from the 1st, when the other application (2nd) is finished with the sound device and releases it, the 1st can not tell that has happened, and it needs to be restarted in order to access the sound device again (via that sound server/daemon in use).
In some cases, it is necessary to restart the alsa sound driver with:
su -c 'rcalasasound restart'
and enter root password, in order to force the 1st device to let go of the sound device.
That (single application only for sound) is one of the reasons why pulse audio was introduced. It is supposed to fix this. However pulse audio is buggy for many users.
Note that the alsa application, in addition to providing the sound driver, also provides an API. The alsa API for many different hardware (not all) will allow sharing of the sound device. So what I do on my PCs is go into each application’s preferences, and I select ‘alsa’ as the output audio mode. When I do that, and when all my multimedia applications are all using alsa, then they can all share the sound device and multiple applications can play sound at the same time.
As a test I recently had amarok (using the xine engine), vlc and smplayer all playing sound at the same time.
Hi oldcpu,
Thanks for the advice and perspective. Unfortunately I am idle this holiday season and with time to spare I did a clean reinstall of the system. This time around I have only been able to get Amarok to work. Not even system sounds are working. I tried your solution and then ran VLC player on Alsa audio but no luck. Sound only from Amarok.
Please Help!
Ok I have gotten to work again.Yes your Konsole command is working. I can now switch between applications, now I won’t spend all day toggling sound cards:P Regarding the setup of applications to run on alsa sound. I need some pointers for this for Kaffeine or for Flashplayer. VLC player is not working for this, nor is SMPlayer. Thanks!
The biggest mistake beginners make with vlc is use the one click install and somehow manage to add the VLC player packaged by videolan and also somehow manage to keep videolan in their list of software repositories. This messes up the packman packaged players because the videolan and packman repositories are in some aspects not compatible with each other (due to a disagreement as to where codecs and such should be located).
The way to avoid this mess after a fresh install is to NOT use the one click install, but rather follow the guidance here: Multi-media and Restricted Format Installation Guide - openSUSE Forums Note that guidance advises to disable or remove videlan after installing libdvdcss. THAT IS IMPORTANT.
I ran though some of the check. For the VideoLAN check I returned only libdvdcss. Yes you are right this second install I used the One-click and I regretted right away, I much prefer YAST or Zypper, even as a newbie. Anyways I made sure to delete VideoLAN repo from with the repo mgr. Shall I post some of the results of the other checks here?
That should mean that all your multimedia is packaged by packman. Presumeably then you have vlc-qt, libvlccore2, libvlc2, vlc-nox installed, all from packman.
You could let us know what codec the video is that won’t work. If the video is called “myvideo.avi” what is the output codec for audio and video from:
In the interest of not wanting to mess around too much I decided to do a fresh reinstall. And followed the Multi-media and Restricted Format Installation Guide - openSUSE Forums format I believe to the letter. Note that I installed the VideoLAN repo then installed libdvdcss in YAST, then immediatly deleted the repo before moving onto installation of Packman and its media codecs through zypper command. Now I am getting a host of problems which includes no sound. When I performed the zypper command I am getting a new strange error the NO KEY ERROR similar to these users NOKEY warnings from Packman - openSUSE Forums. Now I don’t get sound in any applications and even worse my sound card toggle no longer works in YAST–> it freezes up. In addition when I enter your command
rcalsasound restart
it returns the following error
FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop/modules.dep: No such file or directory
Please advise what is going on, have I reinstalled 11.2 so many times that the DVD has been corrupted;) Please note that I am using the Release Candidate downloaded ISO CD if you think that makes any difference. Please what should I do now. It been like this now for 2 installs straight.
Regards
If the DVD is currupted, download and use the GM version.
Yes, I do think it makes a difference. If you download the release candidate, then you will need to do a massive update to replace all of your applications with the latest version. In particular there will be new alsa and new kernel and new pulse updates which will possibly have a direct impact on your sound.
Also, IMHO Gnome with its heavy integration of Pulse Audio has serious audio problems, as opposed to KDE which installs with Pulse Audio disabled by default.
I have done a fresh install with the 11.2 release version. 64 bit KDE. After installing libdvdcss and deleting VideoLAN repo, configuring other repos with Packman at 90 priority settings and then running the following zypper command:
I am recieving alot of the following such error messages in Konsole:
Retrieving package vlc-qt-1.0.4-0.pm.8.12.x86_64 (78/80), 669.0 KiB (2.1 MiB unpacked)
Retrieving: vlc-qt-1.0.4-0.pm.8.12.x86_64.rpm [error]
File ‘./x86_64/vlc-qt-1.0.4-0.pm.8.12.x86_64.rpm’ not found on medium ‘http://ftp.skynet.be/pub/packman/suse/11.2/’
Am I just unlucky and the server is down today or is there something I am missing here. In any case this error applies to many of the packages of the zypper code and I will most definitely have many dependency issues if I move ahead as is. What do you recommend?
Thanks for the quick response Oldcpu. Ah ok no problems I will try later. In regards to the repository config: I see that a couple other ones have come preinstalled such as
Hi Oldcpu I resolved the remaining package depencies by downloading from a packman mirror siteAdditional package repositories - openSUSE but then I encounter the same problem that I had when I was using the 11.2 RC as quoted above.
Also note that on each installation both of the RC and release version. When the update applet runs for first time it retrieves a DBUS error saying that the Package ID or something cannot be found and prompts me to install from YAST manually. Not sure if this is related or just some bug with the release version. Also I have not yet installed the ATI repo.