suse 11.2, asus xonar D1, no sound

I recently bought a decent sound card, the Asus xonar D1. Prior to purchase, I checked the Alsa matrix to make sure that it is supported. I couldn’t get it to work after putting it in, so I did a clean install of Suse 11.2. Initially, it didn’t work, but after I installed alsa-firmware, it worked. However, flash videos had no sound. I remembered something about this when I fist installed 11.2 with my older card. I looked it up and figured out that it was the PCM issue. However, when I opened kmix, there ws no PCM mixer. I even looked through the “hidden” mixers, making them all visible and maxing each out all without success.

Next, I started the “SDB:AudioTroubleshooting” process. When I got to step 2, I deleted the configurations of the xonar card configuration in Yast. I rebooted and lost all sound. I then started over with the “SDB:AudioTroubleshooting” and could not get anything, though I have not gone through updating Alsa, as I hope it is not necessary.

When I run any of the speaker tests, some of the get:

speaker-test 1.0.21

ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory                                                         
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings                    
ALSA lib conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory                                                              
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name                       
ALSA lib conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory                                                               
ALSA lib conf.c:4633:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory    
ALSA lib pcm.c:2211:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM front                         
Playback open error: -2,No such file or directory

One possible problem is that I have Alsa 1.0.21-3.2 and then I have alsa-firmware 1.0.20-3.2.

Please help.

The Asus xonar is not IMHO well supported in Linux. I’ve read of many problems in our forum posted by unhappy xonar users. I think it can be made to work, but it is not as easy to get work as most sound devices.

Unfortunately, the approach to fix the problems you encountered was not intuitive, and hence you likely made things worse by your actions. I really want to get a better handle on what you have done BEFORE I give any recommendations.

The second half of our multimedia stickie has a recommendation for information to provide when one has sound problems. Welcome to multimedia sub-area - openSUSE Forums Please provide that information, and I quote the 2nd half:

… please post in this … sub-forum, providing in your post the following information:

  • provide the URLs (of a summary webpage) that are created by running the diagnostic script noted here:
    SDB:AudioTroubleshooting - openSUSE - Script to run to obtain detailed information. On openSUSE-11.1 and newer that will ask you to run the script /usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh and after the script finishes it will give you a URL to pass to the support personnel. Please post here the output URL. Just the URL. You may need to run that script twice (the first time with root permissions to update in the /usr/sbin directory, and the second time to get the URL).
  • in a terminal, or xterm, or konsole, type: rpm -qa ‘alsa#and post output here
  • in a terminal, or xterm, or konsole, type: rpm -qa ‘pulse#and post output here
  • in a terminal, or xterm, or konsole, type: rpm -q libasound2 #and post output here
  • in a terminal, or xterm, or konsole, type: uname -a #and post output here
  • for openSUSE-11.1 or earlier, in a terminal, or xterm, or konsole, type: cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound #and post output here
  • for openSUSE-11.2 or later, in a terminal, or xterm, or konsole, type: cat /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf #and post output here

My Xonar DX2 always is detected at first as needing ‘snd-oxygen’, whilst it needs ‘snd-virtuoso’ to work. My workaround for that is to let it happen, remove the card’s config from Yast after install, reboot and it’s detected as needing ‘snd-virtuoso’, i.e. problems solved.

Compiling alsa, and using alsaconf in the past gave me the same result.

oldcpu,

Here are the results of the second set of diagnostics. The output of the shell script is too long to post directly and I have been unsuccessful in figuring out where to put an attachment


me@linux-slsf:~> rpm -qa '*alsa*'
alsa-utils-1.0.21-3.1.i586
alsa-oss-1.0.17-25.2.i586
alsa-1.0.21-3.2.i586
alsa-firmware-1.0.20-3.2.noarch
alsa-plugins-1.0.21-3.3.i586

me@linux-slsf:~> rpm -qa '*pulse*'
libpulse0-0.9.21-1.2.1.i586
libxine1-pulse-1.1.18.1-1.pm.36.3.i586

me@linux-slsf:~> rpm -q libasound2
libasound2-1.0.21-3.2.i586

me@linux-slsf:~> uname -a
Linux linux-slsf 2.6.31.12-0.1-default #1 SMP 2010-01-27 08:20:11 +0100 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

me@linux-slsf:~> cat /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf
options snd slots=snd-oxygen
# HJNj.k3aXN7RpNxE:Virtuoso 100 (Xonar D1)
alias snd-card-0 snd-oxygen

If there is a cleaner way to post this, please let me know.

So it looks like your Xonar needs the virtuoso driver as well. In /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf replace ‘oxygen’ by ‘virtuoso’. Reboot and see if sound matters improve. This change is exactly what changed on my system, when I did what I described. Here it is, from my working situation:


options snd slots=snd-virtuoso
# zsAr.Vv_TGYft8+1:Virtuoso 200 (Xonar D2)
alias snd-card-0 snd-virtuoso

As you see, it’s a D2, not a DX2 as mentioned earlier.

The diagnostic script should be run when one’s PC is connected to the Internet, and the UPLOAD/SHARE option should be selected. That will upload the script contents to the Internet (alsa site to host the post) and provide you a URL with the script output.

If for some reason you do not get that, then just run the script with the “–no-upload” option as such:

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

and that will create the file /tmp/alsa-info.txt. Simply open that file /tmp/alsa-info.txt with a text editor, copy the contents, and paste that information to a pastebin site such as PasteBin.be, press dump (on that site) and it will give you a URL. Then post the URL here.

oldcpu,

The output of the Alsa shell script is here:
http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=ba0d514e3332c0f1a252b55d1d2726f89c0c3066

Knurpht,
I modified the .conf file to reference snd-virtuoso rather than snd-oxygen and rebooted. Sadly, this did not work.

hmmm thats a bit confusing. I note an Aus A7N8X … my athlon-2800 has an Asus A7N8X Deluxe, but I don’t have an Xonar D1 … I assume thats a PCI card ?

Silly question - are you certain the cables are wired correct? Do you have sound in any other OS ? I’ve had the maid knock out the cables in my PC by mistake, and then rewire different.

I have not messed around with the cables since I installed the new sound card. It is a PCI card.

having just looked at the back, the cable to my speakers is firmly plugged in. I had sound for a moment after doing a clean install, but lost all sound when I deleted the sound card configurationin yast in a failed attempt to get sound in flash-player.

As a side note:
kimix recognizes the sound card and brings up a mixer with two tabs, the onboard sound of nvidia nForce2 and Xonar D1. The Xonar D1 is and has always been missing the important PCM volume control. I was able to get sound in flash player in the past by adjusting that control.

What are you using as a speaker test ?

Also, if using KDE ensure that your settings in YaST > Hardware > Sound in terms of sound device order, is also the same in KDE in Configure Desktop > Multimedia

I have just skimmed the replies here. However, I have a Asus Xonar Essence ST. It is working perfectly in Opensuse 11.2.

In a nutshell, here is what I had to do.:

1 Install alsa 1.0.22 (on my system, at least, this did not update the kernel drivers or alsa utilities, so…)

2 Download and build alsa kernel drivers 1.0.22.1

3 Download and build alsa utilities 1.0.22

This made sure that the kernel drivers and correct alas mixer version was available.

Then I deleted the kmix config ~/.kde/share/config/kmixrc and ~/.kde/share/config/kmixctrlrc

Yast did not correctly configure the card, but it was not necessary anyway.

I then set up KDE sound from the System Settings menu and put Asus Virtuoso at the top of the list of devices.

Hopefully this admittedly terse description will be of help.

Paul

If one is going to install 1.0.22.1 it should not be necessary to build them. The are available as rpms.

I recenly updated the guide on how to install the prebuild alsa 1.0.22.1 rpms:
Alsa-update - openSUSE

for some reason recent (in 11.1 and 11.2) changes to YaST software managment have confused many of our openSUSE new and average users, and they are not able to use YaST properly to selectively update specific (and limited) rpms from 3rd party repositories. Accordingly I had to put a mini-YaST update guide in the middle of the alsa update guide (as much as that pained me to have to do so).

… anyway, the long and short of it is there should be no need to have to custom compile alsa.

Old cpu,

The results I posted were from the first speaker test on the SDB: Audio Troubleshooting page.

speaker-test -Dplug:front -c2 -l5 -twav

I deleted my sound card configuration in Yast and rebooted. I am pretty sure this is the only change I have made, however, the results of the above command now give me:

speaker-test 1.0.21

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
WAV file(s)
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 2048 to 16384
Period size range from 1024 to 1024
Using max buffer size 16384
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 1024
was set buffer_size = 16384
 0 - Front Left
 1 - Front Right
Time per period = 2.686166
 0 - Front Left
 1 - Front Right

and so on. Though I still can’t hear anything, this is a change.

Would you recommend I try the newer Alsa?

Did you try ALL 3 tests for audio? Did you try with headphones in addition to speakers. Did you also try those 3 tests in a terminal with root permissions?

Since you have changed your configuration in yast and rebooted, I also need to see the output again of your re-running the diagnostic script.

Sorry, I can not answer your request for a recommendation based on the limited information provided.

Recall that the speakers are muted by default.

Do you get an appropriate mixer display if you run the command: alsamixer
in a text console?

You use the arrow keys to move between controls. The M key toggles mute / unmute.

P

here is the result of one test

[QUOTE
linux-slsf:/home/me # speaker-test -Dplug:front -c2 -l5 -twav

speaker-test 1.0.21

Playback device is plug:front
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
WAV file(s)
ALSA lib pcm.c:2211:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.front
Playback open error: -2,No such file or directory[/QUOTE]

here is the link to the alsa shell script:
http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=87a4712964bf5960cfb39ee72d1bc0d8f9bb5c0e

prhunt: I have typed alsamixer both as root and as a regular user and bash tells me “No such user or directory”

aye carumba.

I am back to the speaker tests failing

Here are the tests I’ve run both as su and not:

speaker-test -c2 -l5 -twav

speaker-test 1.0.21

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
WAV file(s)                                      
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory                                                         
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings                    
ALSA lib conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory                                                              
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name                       
ALSA lib conf.c:4154:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory                                                               
ALSA lib conf.c:4633:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory    
ALSA lib pcm.c:2211:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default                       
Playback open error: -2,No such file or directory                                     

I note this:

!!Aplay/Arecord output
!!------------

APLAY

aplay: device_list:223: no soundcards found...

ARECORD

arecord: device_list:223: no soundcards found...

You have changed your PC’s configuration again, and you have not told us what you have done.

I work in an engineering environment for a living, and a cardinal rule is one MUST keep things under a configuration control, and when a configuration is changed, one needs to let everyone know the configuration is changed and what it has been changed to.

I can not help you if you change the configuration and do not tell what you have done.

Judging by the diagnostic script, it appears that the virtuoso driver is not loaded.

At a console, su to root. Then enter:

modprobe -r snd-oxygen
modprobe snd-virtuoso

If you find that things work after that, then it is a matter of forcing virtuoso to load at start-up.