systemwide low volume

Did they have working sound before the problem started?

What is the output of:
cat /proc/interrupts

It appears your sound device is on IRQ 17, which matches that of pata_jmicron (also on IRQ 17) where I think that is a hard driver controller? I don’t think putting one’s sound device on the same interrupt as the PATA controller is a good idea. Is this they way you had it (ie your sound card placement in the PCI or PCI express bus) when your sound worked?

I’m not sure if they had working sound or not, but with my other pc and this soundcard they had working sound.
Here is the output for:cat /proc/interrupts
pastebin - collaborative debugging tool

(pata jmicron is a hard driver controller of asus, i have a p5q3 motherboard)

This is the way i had my soundcard working, in this pci slot… at it ist now, at the moment. Still no sound and what i hear is only in programs like amarok, and only really low volume…

I try the livecds again, and reinstall my system… i have no clue.

deleted - reviewing …

“in programs like amarok” … ??

Can you be more specific? What programs? What versions of the programs? And packaged by whom?
Edit: Do you need help to figure that out?

I did what u said:
cat /proc/interrupts

and pastebin the output i got. No other pc-s or anything. I will try livecds again, if i can get sound and try reinstalling my system… as i think it can’t really make things go worse…

Well i only tried amarok, and krecord, since i have a fresh install. They’re come with the dvd installation.

If this is not a hardware problem, then you can continue to work with your current configuration, until the updates to alsa are available for the new kernel. Your inability to get this working under any other OS does point to hardware, and it could be as simple as your cables being wrong. Your hard drive and sound on the same interrupt is not good. If it were me, I would move the sound card to another slot.

I do not see how a re-install of openSUSE will help, other than help the time go by, which surely is not the intent.

IMHO patience is what is needed here.

Also, install some other applications and see if they make a difference. For example, set up your software package management with 4 repositories (repos) and just 4 repositories. This is OSS, Non-Oss, Update and packman. Just those 4. No others. There is guidance here for those: Repositories/11.1 - openSUSE-Community Just those 4. No others!

After those 4 are setup, go to YaST > Software > Software Management and change “filter” to “search” and search for and install the packman packaged versions of amarok, amarok-xine, amarok-packman, libxine1, xine-ui, smplayer, mplayerplugin-in, vlc, w32codec-all, libffmpeg0, ffmpeg. And then test some of your videos/music with smplayer, mplayer, vlc, ffplay. And see if that makes a difference (just so we can completely remove the possibility of this being an application related problem).

Edit - also check your BIOS to ensure sound is switched ON in the BIOS.

I don’t get any sound at the correct jacks, in xubuntu livecd… i’m going to try out my soundcard in an another pc… i will write back the results…

The soundcard is working fine with my other pc, opensuse 11.1 x86_32.

I plugged my soundcard into another pci slot of this pc, and sound is still low…

The integrated HD-AUDIO soundcard on my motherboard: Asus P5Q3 works good, it has fine volume. Now the real question is, why my audigy4 isn’t working…

What would have been helpful, would have been for you to run /usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh from the PC that was working with this sound card.

Also, from that working PC, provide the output of:
rpm -qa | grep alsa
rpm -qa | grep pulse
rpm -q libasound2
uname -a
cat /etc/modprobe.d/sound

That way we would have a working configuration to compare against a broken configuration.

This pc i can test my soundcard with: opensue 11.1 32 bit, here is the results after this:

pastebin - collaborative debugging tool

alsa-info.sh as user:
pastebin - collaborative debugging tool

as root:
pastebin - collaborative debugging tool

I take it then sound works on this 32-bit PC ?

I note you have the original alsa that came with openSUSE-11.1 installed, you still have pulse audio installed, and you have an updated 2.6.27.19-3.2-pae kernel. (where openSUSE comes with the 2.6.27.7 and the latest for openSUSE is the 2.6.27.21).

It will take some time to compare mixer outputs, but that is all likely a mute point … as this is a 32-bit and not 64-bit install, the kernel version is different, as is the pulse configuration. So its not really possible to accurately compare apples to apples.

Actually, this was revealing … there was a asignificant difference between the amixer outputs … comparing what you gave me some hours ago, to your more recent post.

I note On your PC where the card works:

  • Simple Mixer Control ‘Front’ @ 75% vs 100% where it doesn’t work
  • Simple Mixer Control ‘Side’ @ 0% vs 100% where it doesn’t work
  • Simple Mixer Control LFE @ 0% vs 100% where it doesn’t work
  • Simple Mixer Control ‘Mic’ @ 100% vs 0% where it doesn’t work
  • Simple Mixer Control ‘Analog Mix’ Playback @ 100% vs 0% where it doesn’t work
  • External Amp ON vs OFF where it doesn’t work
    .
    In particular, I highlighted in bold two items you should look at.

It appears to me your External Amp should be ON for one thing.

My system was installed as 32 bit, yesterday when my sound disappeared… after the sound disappeared and i planned to reinstall my system i installed 64 bit version (i had 32 bit since i did not have the installer disc for 64 bit downloaded yet)… and the sound did not worked on the 64 bit version too just like in the 32 bit version… 32 bit version had low volume problem too.

You just confused me … ( or maybe I confused myself). … I thought you stated you put the card in another PC, and the sound worked fine with openSUSE-11.1.

So you are now saying you have the same problem with both PCs in which you tried the graphic card?

Nop, i have a desktop, which had 32 bit installed and the sound worked fine, then suddenly the sound disappeared, i did what a i did after that i did a suse 11.1 reinstall but installed 64 bit os instead of 32 bit one. After we were trying to fix it i got out the soundcard and put it into another desktop, which had 11.1 32 bit installed, and it worked. What i wanted to point out, after the sound disappeared on my desktop with 32 bit suse, i couldn’t make it on that pc with 32 bit suse, and i reinstalled the pc with 64 bit suse. ( i hope it’s not really confusing ) 2 pcs, 1 had 32 bit installed sound disappeared, and i reinstalled the pc with 64 bit os, and i have another pc with 32 bit os, on the 2nd pc the soundcard works, on the first one the soundcard has low volume problem.

I am still confused. …

But no matter … what would be helpful is an alsa-info.sh script ouput from a PC where your sound with that same graphic card works! Not some other setup where it doesn’t work.

And what would also be useful is the output of the rpm, uname and cat commands on a PC where your sound with that same graphic cards works! Not some other setup where it doesn’t work.