Hello again. I know i am asking too many questions for a new guy here, but if it’s not too much…is there any way i can make my sound card go 5.1 and enable a “fill speakers” option? I have an onboard via hd 1705 sound codec as it’s listed in my mainboard manual. The sound card it’s self appears in the system as aa nvidia hda, and so it’s listed in the manual. So my question is, shouldn’t it be a via since it has a via hd chip? Anyway, apparently my kmix volume control has very vew options for it. I also have a via tremor pci sound card, but it’s not hd. That one has all the options available in the kmix, but the via hd doesn’t. I’d prefer using the via hd since it’s “high definition”. Is there any way i can enable the 5.1 on it? Thanks in advance
Hi, sorry that I do not have an answer to your question. My sound card is working, but I am not sure what drivers are necessary to run youtube videos. I just installed 11.3 and everything worked fine on 10.3. If I switch over to Windows, I can hear the sound for the same videos I tried to play on Suse 11.3.
Any suggestions?
Is this openSUSE-11.3 ?
If so, did you go to kmix > settings > configure channels ? You should be able to drag and drop extra controls from the left to the right of the window that is presented in kmix.
tried that already. unfortunately it only gives me volume sliders for pcm, master and front. No option to enable multiple chanels, nothing. Maybe it’s just a too obscure soundcard?:-?
P.S. it is openSUSE 11.3
Well i once had this issue but it was in 10.2. At the time, i wasn’t sure either what the problem was so i installed alsa, oss pulse audio gstreamer and xine. Besides the fact that i find gstream and xine useful, i also use alsa and oss from time to time. Either way, that fixed it for me. But i still don’t have a clue which one was faulty. Worth a shot, and it can’t harm.
srry for multiple posting…munichtexan, i just discovered also that on my config, when i play embeded music, for example from beemp3.com or youtube, the soundcard is inaccessible by amarok or any other sound player. I miss the days of 10.0 when you could configure all the options of the snd card in amarok or yast and k control center…
There are two ways to address this that I know of. (1) enable pulse audio and let pulse audio manage this. IMHO this works only with newer faster computers (as the overhead of pulse in doing this is too much for older computers). I’ve proven this functionality on openSUSE-11.4 KDE4 with pulse audio (2) set all applications (including the desktop) to use the alsa api (such as alsa-oss emulation which uses the alsa api). I have a PC (openSUSE-11.3) where I can play music from youtube and amarok and other multimedia players at the same time because I carefully tuned each of those applications (and the desktop) to use the alsa api.
Hi oldcpu,
And how do you tune each apps ? In systems settings in KDE ? GNOME uses Pulse Audio by default i think, is that right ?
there are two methods that I know of for applications to share the same hardware audio device (and then thus be able to play audio at the same time through the speakers).
- use the ALSA API in the output mode of the desktop and also of the multimedia applications. Only some (most actually) but NOT all hardware supports this. All my hardware supoprts this. The naming convention as to the audio output mode differs from application to application. Sometimes it is “alsa oss” other times it is “alsa api” … other times it is just “alsa” … it all depends on the app as to what it is called and it varies massively from app to app. Massively. In KDE I select the “xine backend” for the desktop (where firefox typically uses the desktop assigned backend, and I believe Amarok for KDE4 does the same). Then in xine (using the app xine-ui so as to tune xine) I select an output audio mode that allows the audio to be shared … etc … it requires some trial and error efforts but it is NOT difficult. Hence from then any xine app (such as amarok and firefox and desktop sounds) will share the sound audio device with any other app that also uses the ALSA API. In the case of xine this may be called the ‘alsa-oss’ (which is an alsa api emulation of oss).
You need, though, to look at the output audio mode of every application to ensure it uses the alsa api.
.
- use pulse audio - this is supposed to be the replacement for the functionality that until now was available via the ALSA API. There are purportedly PULSE AUDIO gui that one can use to tune this - of which I know nothing to speak of. I have noted the application ‘pauavcontrol’ provides a good gui for control sound in multiple applications. One needs a fast PC IMHO for pulse.
I don’t use Gnome in any new openSUSE version so I can’t comment on Gnome. I use pulse in openSUSE-11.1 (which is the only Gnome desktop that I have currently) and thats a bit dated to draw comparisons.
That is correct, Gnome does use PulseAudio by default on 11.3 and I expect it will on 11.4 (KDE also has P/A default), although I haven’t tested it yet on Gnome 11.4.
So you mean that every application (that uses sound of course) has a setting of this sort ? What is this xine-ui you are talking about ?
Either they have their own control for the output audio mode, or they use the desktop’s default settings.
DaaX, you could have looked it up in Yast>Software Management. 
It’s an old user interface (GUI) for xine, useful for testing if you are getting problems with xine-based media players. Unlike some players, it has a comprehensive interface for changing many xine settings.
Sorry,
I thought it was something else…:shame:
Yeah, I saw this UI once, but never used it.
still use xine-ui:D…got used to it from the first suse days…oldcpu, at the time when my glitch appeared, i was playing smth on beemp3.com, witch has something embeded like youtube, but i am not sure whether it uses flash or another media backend. Is it possible it may have used a different media backed than the desktop one? Amarok has no more setting in it’s preferences for media backend so i assume it uses the desktop one. I have xine set up in kcontrol center. Oh, is the arts system still being developed for kde? I used to like that in kde3.5. Used arts for kde output, and would’ve still allowed xine to play through alsa. Xine is currently set on auto. i assume it’s using pulseaudio then. Is pulse audio that different from alsa? is it better? Does pulseaudio has certain system requirements for it to work on it’s optimum performance?
I just found smth new about my soundcard. It appears built by nvidia MCP61(my chipset is nvidia 7025/nforce630a). The codec appears to be VT1705(that would be VIA as far as i know. This is from the manual. Yast reports it as being intel hda - nvidia hda, but doesn’t show the codec. I’ve searched through the modules available in yast when setting u the card, but i found nothing resembling mcp61 or vt1705. Has anyone else experienced this issue? is there any workaround? Again the snd card works, i just can’t make it go all 5.1 channel whatever i’d try to do…
Issure resolved >:)lol! I’ve checked the alsa website to see which is thery latest version and if there was anything fixed for ALC
. Indeed there was and a lot was fixed. All i did was download the driver and compile myself. 5.1 works great with no issue:D. If anyone else has this issue, please not that when installing alsa-tools and alsa-utils you might encounter problems. I couldn’t work around them as the error that “make” provided was just this “Error1”. No other info. But if alsa-utils and alsa-tools don’t compile for you, just open yast>install software and install the 1.0.23. That will do. Also, you need to uninstall your previous alsa driver before you compile and install the 1.0.24. Please note that when you uninstall the alsa 1.0.23 yast will try to resolve dependency by uninstalling yast-sound. Let it uninstall, and after you finish compile and install alsa 1.0.24 you can reinstall yast-sound along with alsa-tools1.0.23 and alsa-utils1.0.23.
IMPORTANT!!
These are steps i’ve taken in order to make my integrated MCP61 HDAnvidia 630a VT1705 to work. If you have a snd card with a codec different than VT1708/VT1705/ALC665, this procedure might not work, and might cause other issues. As is, this was not a very clean way to do it. Oldcpu, if you think there are things or steps that need to be removed from the post, feel free to do so. There might be things there that i have done without being needed(needed or safe). And also thanks to oldcpu, your sticky on the forum about snd card config helped. It directed me to the alsa web-site and see if there is a fix with the latest driver. Maybe u should add this resolution to the sticky. Someone may find it useful. Thanks for your help, it was all greatly appreciated. Cheers
Typically there is no need to custom compile to get the lastest alsa, as one of the alsa developers is an openSUSE packager for sound, and one can get the latest rpms by following this (somewhat out of date) guide: SDB:Alsa-update - openSUSE
Reference learning more about one’s audio hardware and software configuration, simply run the diagnostic script that comes with alsa:
/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh
If it notes there is an update available, then run it again once (only once) with root permissions to do the update, and then after the update is in place run it again a 2nd time as a regular user.
well i have all the comunity repositories installed but yast didn’t show any update there…is there a specific rep that provides alsa updates? Anyway, i do wish i would have seen that aricle before…would have spared me the nerves of trying to make alsautils and tools to install:))). Cheers
great, solved card issue, but now i have same problem as munichtexan. Youtube videos will not play. Anyone’s got any ideeas? Everything appears to be installed and working. Smth i did wrong when updating maybe?:-? Thanks. Cheers