Various sound related issues

English Multimedia
1

I have a couple of sound issues that I don’t think are related, but it is a possibility. This is with an X-Fi card, openSuSe 11.2, and KDE.

  1. I have a 5.1 speaker system and I’m getting sound from what it calls the “Surround” and “Front” speakers, but I am not getting any sound from the “side” speakers. I’ve checked a hundred times to make sure it’s connected correctly.

  2. Amarok will only play music from one of the options above (surround, front, or side). As I have a 5.1 system I’d actually like to use ALL of the speakers. How do I set that up?

  3. Flash in firefox is giving me some troubles. It plays normally, but doesn’t produce any sound and the pause button on websites like hulu and youtube just won’t work (doesn’t pause the video).

  4. VLC wont play any sound. No matter how much I play around with it’s audio settings.

2

I documented my experience with surround sound here: Exploring surround sound in Linux - openSUSE Forums but that was NOT with an Xfi.

As you noted, in most cases surround sound problems are because of a mixer misconfiguration.

I recommend you start a new thread on your flash problems. Some users solved it by simply moving up the PCM volume control (it changes dynamically). Others solved it by removing libflashsupport or by installing or removing pullin-flash-player. Others had to actually close any other multimedia apps to get flash to play.

What codecs are you trying. I hope you did not enable videolan repository and hence mess up your codec locations.

3

Alright. I’ll check that out and get back to you if I have any problems.

As you noted, in most cases surround sound problems are because of a mixer misconfiguration.
I recommend you start a new thread on your flash problems. Some users solved it by simply moving up the PCM volume control (it changes dynamically). Others solved it by removing libflashsupport or by installing or removing pullin-flash-player. Others had to actually close any other multimedia apps to get flash to play.

Tried all of the above with no effect. The only odd thing was that I couldn’t find a package called libflashsupport.

What codecs are you trying. I hope you did not enable videolan repository and hence mess up your codec locations.

I have no idea what codecs I’m trying. How would I find out?

4

Ever figure it out? I have a similiar issue in that I can sucessfully test my x-fi card with Front/Wave in and the test sound plays fine. However anything in Amarok will not play. It says too many errors have occured in playlist. Playback stopped. I really want to hear my music!

5

As far as the surround sound issue I’ve had absolutely no luck. I have every channel turned up to max in kmixer and still nothing. Did you play around with kmixer and make sure your audio channels aren’t muted?

6

As far as surround sound, how about giving us more detail? With your PC connected to the internet, and your mixer set up the way you believe is correct, type:

/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

and select SHARE/UPLOAD and when it is finished it will give you a URL. Please post here the URL. JUST the URL.

Also provide the output of

cat /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf

Did you download and test your surround sound with the chan-id.wav file from: http://www.halfgaar.net/media/chan-id.zip . And if so, what players did you test it in? In my case, I always test it with mplayer and vlc.

I explored other test ideas in the thread Exploring surround sound in Linux - openSUSE Forums . Did you try them?

7

The info from /usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh

http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=09f2671bad40779842670473a905642f98d7daae

and the info from cat /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf

options snd slots=snd-hda-intel

u1Nb._SonIPALto1:82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel

I tested the chan-id.wav file with mplayer (remember that I can’t get sound from VLC right now) and it didn’t play anything.

8

are you running 64bit? if so you will need the 64 libflashplayer

see Flash Player 10 on 11.1 - Page 3 - openSUSE Forums

9

Nope. This is a 32-bit system. I’m checking out the thread for other possible fixes though.

10

Why can’t you get sound from VLC? I hope you did not add videolan repository, and end up mixing packman and videolan applications.

I’ve gone on record over 100 times recommending users ONLY have 4 repos permanently enabled: OSS, Non-OSS, Update, and Packman. No others. None. If one does not, then effects and problems can happen that are difficult to track down, and it requires skilled-average or advanced knowledge to do so. My guess is your VLC is borked because you did not follow that philosophy.

11

There is an OBVIOUS problem right here:
Simple mixer control ‘PCM’,0
Capabilities: pvolume cvolume cswitch cswitch-joined
Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
Limits: Playback 0 - 256 Capture 0 - 256
Front Left: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] Capture 256 [100%] [0.00dB]** [off]**
Front Right: Playback 256 [100%] [0.00dB] Capture 256 [100%] [0.00dB]** [off]**

PCM should NOT be muted.

12

That sounds likely. How would I go about fixing that?

Also after configuring the playback in mplayer I got the .wav file to play successfully. It played the file, but it did shoot out he following error(s):

[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: pcm.c:2211:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default

[Fatal Error] Jack can not open server!

As far as the results of the .wav file goes:

The “center” speaker is playing the front left/front right.
The rear left speaker is playing center
The rear right speaker is playing both the rear left/right.
The front left/right speakers still produce no sound.

13

You could also install smplayer from packman, as that gives you GUI control over mplayer’s many features.

14

You could work your way through RedDwarf’s somewhat dated, but still very relevant guide:
Check your multimedia problem in ten steps - openSUSE Forums

15

I have a feeling that KMix isn’t showing me all of my available options. Here is a screenshot of my KMix window:

http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/9483/kmix.png

This is after going to settings –> configure channels and making sure that everything is checked. As you can see there isn’t an unmute button under PCM. How would I unmute it?

16

That mixer image looks ok. Maybe its my mistake and the PCM mute there was for a capture ? I don’t have an x-fi and some of its settings are different.

Still, from what I have read, the 1.0.21 alsa implementation of a driver for the X-Fi does have surround sound support.

In one case I noted a Ubuntu user created a custom .asoundrc file to help them:
Re: PCI Express SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio
i.e. the created in /home/username the file .asoundrc and restarted their PC (to restart the alsa driver - although there are other ways to restart alsa without restarting the PC):
.asoundrc

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "surround51"
slave.channels 6
route_policy duplicate
}

I do not know if that .asoundrc file is necessary. Typically such a file is not necessary. I am also very leary of Ubuntu user fixes, so note that .asoundrc file may in fact make things worse.

Fix your vlc. Then try the tests that I noted in my surround sound explorations, using vlc.

17

I got my VLC fixed and after running the file again all of the sound came from the center speaker (with no sound coming from anything else). This is obviously vastly different then the results mplayer gave me above.

18

I’m not at a linux pc right now, but I recall there are controls in VLC (and also in smplayer) where one can select surround sound. Ensure you select those.

19

The only option I could find in VLC was the “force detection of dolby surround” which I turned on. It gave me the same results as above.

20

Did you try smplayer. Note it has options for selecting surround sound. One can also select different audio “output driver” in smplayer’s preferences.