Problems with audio/sound with new motherboard

I recently bought a new motherboard and I’m having some troubles setting up the audio correctly.

Newegg.com - Foxconn M61PMV AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

The issues in specific: 1.I get sound from one speaker only. ** 2. front panel does not work.**

Here are some screenshots I took depicting things I’ve tried to solve the problem. I’ve played around with most settings shown here to no avail.

http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt80/skyliner390/yast.png
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt80/skyliner390/Phonon.png
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt80/skyliner390/alsamixer1.png
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt80/skyliner390/alsamixeer.png

Other things worth mentioning:

  • I performed a fresh openSuse 11.4 X64 installation with only the default repos installed + tumbleweed and pacman’s tumbleweed. The problem WAS present before using the tumbleweed repos.
  • The same issue was present in windows 7. I had to install the motherboard audio drivers to get the sound to play properly.
  • BIOS does not have fancy audio options, just a simple Enable - Disable onboard audio.

Thanks for any help :slight_smile:

If the front panel does not work, I’d say you did not connect it at all, or misconnected it. If the latter, that could be the cause of the one channel sound. Managed to do this some years ago.
Another one: did you check whether the speaker plug (assumed to be a single stereo one) is plugged in correctly?

I’m sorry, I wasn’t clear enough.

I had the exact same issue with windows 7. After installing the audio drivers that came with the CD. **1- Music was played on both speakers and 2- Front panel started to work. **

There are no linux drivers on the cd though, nor in the manufacturers site.

GNU/Linux provide audio drivers with the kernel. The driver is known as ‘alsa’ and inside are many different kernel modules where the module specific to one’s audio will be loaded.

GNU/Linux will be different from MS-Windows here. You already have the GNU/Linux audio driver. Likely we are only looking at a configuration issue here on GNU/Linux.

In openSUSE-11.4 it is useful (if not already done) to install the application pulse audio volume control (pavucontrol) and then the first time one runs a multimedia application (for each application) also run pavucontrol and tune pavucontrol for one’s audio application and pulse audio. That tuning will then be applied each time one runs that application again. Hence do same for each application once tuned properly.

In pavucontrol pay particular attention to the ‘Configuration’ tab, ensure your 5.1 or 7.1 sound device is selected. In the ‘Output Devices’ tab ensure the SHOW filter has ‘All Devices’ selected and you don’t have inappropriate levels muted. In the ‘Playback’ tab ensure the SHOW filter has ‘All streams’ selected so that you see all the streaming that is being done to one’s multimedia application.

If pavucontrol does not work we can look at a more detailed alsa driver configuration, but to do that we will need more information, such as that provided by running (with pc connected to internet):


/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

and select the share/upload option and then when it is done copying the audio configuration to the internet, take the website/url-address provided and post that address here.

Thanks for the explanation oldcpu

I had no more luck using pavcontrol than tinkering with alsamxer. :frowning:

I believe the alsa modules loaded for my sound card may not be the correct ones.The sound card is nvidia, but somewhere in the report I read HDA intel… perhaps there is a problem with hardware identification, which leads to the kernel loading an incorrect driver and thus leading to partial functionality. Maybe thats why win7 also had the same problem, it loaded the wrong drivers. After Installing the “correct” drivers from the CD, everything worked perfectly though. I find this very peculiar, and leads me to believe its more than just a misconfiguration.

here is the ALSA info report:

http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=771b6942ac0c2a8584926ca7fe0dd127de8e180e

PS. I have a two speaker setup, no fancy surround system or nothing like that. Just plain old stereo :slight_smile:

Ok thanks, I note a 64-bit openSUSE-11.4 on a FOXCONN M61PMV with the 3.0.0-39-desktop kernel. That reminded me this is a Tumbleweed thread in the wrong forum hardware area.

Because of that, I am going to move this thread to the Tumbleweed area of our forum, and I will reply there.

I ask that WEB users not reply to this thread until after it has been moved to Tumbleweed forum area. I ask that NNTP users consider this thread closed and then look for this thread “Problems with audio/sound with new motherboard” by my oldcpu handle, where I will quote Handersion’s salient post so that you know where to reply to.

The move will take about 20 to 30 minutes, as I need to wait for this notification post of mine to make it out through the NNTP gateway.

Once the post is out, I will start the new thread.

I also have a post to try and help Hanzdersion, but I want my reply to appear in the Tumbleweed area.

Thankyou for your patience in this move.

I will post again after the thread has been moved.

This thread has now been moved to tumbleweed, and both WEB based and NNTP users are invited to reply to this thread.

If you are curious about the old thread, you can find it here: Problems with audio/sound with new motherboard or in the NNTP hardware area in a thread started by user hanzdersion entitled “Problems with audio/sound with new motherboard” . However I ask that you reply in this new tumbleweed area.

I think I have quoted the salient information above.

Thank you for your patience during the thread move.

Thank you for the alsa-info.sh script output which you posted here: http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=771b6942ac0c2a8584926ca7fe0dd127de8e180e

I note a 64-bit openSUSE-11.4 on a FOXCONN M61PMV with the 3.0.0-39-desktop kernel. Alsa driver version 1.0.24 and alsa utilities version 1.0.24.2 with a VIA VT1708BCE hardware audio codec.

I see nothing untoward in the mixer, although I puzzle over this mixer control:


Simple mixer control 'Smart 5.1',0
  Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined penum
  Playback channels: Mono
  Mono: Playback [on]

not knowing what it does.

Since you do not use 5.1 speakers, have you considered switching that off ?

Please, can you try that and see what it does ? Something like:


amixer -D hw:0  set 'Smart 5.1' 0

although it may be


amixer -D hw:0 set 'Smart 5.1' 1

it may even need a comma ? ie


amixer -D hw:0  set 'Smart 5.1',0

I don’t know! and maybe instead of ‘0’ and ‘1’ one can type ‘OFF’ and ‘ON’. Or maybe you can find a mixer control.

One can find one’s mixer controls by typing:


amixer scontrols

I note the VT1708BCE hardware audio codec is relatively new . Searching the web for information on it, I stumbled across this page which notes the VT1708BCE is very simliar to the VT1708S: https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/665051/

However I also could not find much help wrt the VT1708S. :frowning:

I did note this from the alsa documentation for forcing model options in the HD-Audio-Models.txt file:


VIA VT17xx/VT18xx/VT20xx
========================
  auto		BIOS setup (default)

which is not much of a selection to try !

Still you could try adding this line to the very start of your /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf file:


options snd-hda-intel model=auto

and restart your PC and see if that helps.

And finally, I would REALLY like to see a screen print of your pavucontrol controls for the Configuration Tab (list the selections), Input device tab (ensure SHOW all input-devices selected), and playback tab (ensure SHOW all-streams selected).

and if all else fails, we can try an alsa sound driver update, as even tumbleweed does NOT have the most cutting edge sound driver. I can point you to the SuSE-GmbH sound packagers repository where the latest cutting else alsa sound driver rpms are kept.

OK, I tried playing around with the command and this worked:


 amixer -D hw:0  set 'Smart 5.1' off
Simple mixer control 'Smart 5.1',0
 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined penum
 Playback channels: Mono
 Mono: Playback [off]

However apparently nothing changed.
I also tried adding


options snd-hda-intel model=auto

to the 50-sound.conf file but it didn’t work either.

Here are the screenshots you asked for :

http://i55.tinypic.com/wi3vx1.png
http://i55.tinypic.com/15n92ti.png
http://i56.tinypic.com/2h4lzzs.png
http://i55.tinypic.com/jjws38.jpg

So after having to boot into windows a couple times I went to a local hardware store and bought a small pci card for $11. Not the greatest card but it works just fine.
the only bad thing is that it doesn’t have a front panel connector, so I have to plug my headphones to the back of the PC, good thing they have a long cable. :slight_smile:

I ended up disabling the onboard audio in the BIOS and set up this card as the preferred card. Now everything works stupendously.

Thanks for your help oldcpu :slight_smile:

Well, a hardware solution is good ! :slight_smile:

Actually, with pulse audio, it is possible to keep the motherboard sound enabled and switch easily between 2 hardware sound devices (it does take a bit of practise). On my sandbox PC I have a motherboard device and an inexpensive PCI audio card each plugged in to different speakers. Pulse audio gives one many options, for example, I can:
(a) tune all applications to play sound to audio device/card-0 on speakers-set-0, or
(b) tune all applications to play sound to audio device/card-1 on speakers-set-1, or
(c) have audio device/card-0 play sound from application-a on speakers-set-0, while audio device/card-1 plays sound from application-b on speakers-set-1 [at the same time or only one at a time] (or combinations there-of with applications a to z … )
(d) have audio device/card-0 play sound from application-a on speakers-set-0 while at the same time audio device/card-1 plays sound also from application-a on speakers-set-1 [ie sound from all the same application on all speakers at the same time]

Since you have the hardware, you could re-enable your motherboard sound (retaining the PCI sound device), write a bug report on openSUSE-11.4 hardware and see if the openSUSE packager for sound can fix this for you. The openSUSE packager for sound is also an alsa sound driver developer, so if anyone can fix this, they can! :slight_smile:

If you decide to purse that, there is guidance for raising bug reports here: openSUSE:Submitting bug reports - openSUSE and one can use their openSUSE forum user name / password to log on to buzilla. Write the bug report against component ‘sound’. Attach to the bug report the file /tmp/alsa-info.txt that one gets by running:


/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh --no-upload

and ensure the bug report has all the salient details as the openSUSE sound packager will not read a forum thread (but they are incredibly good at fixing bugs in the sound driver).

Glad to read you have sound via the PCI card !!