White noise from sound card

English Hardware
1

Hello,

This is my first post here, hopefully it is in the right place.

Please could somebody help as I have a strange problem with my sound card. I’m afraid I don’t know much about the inner workings of linux so please go easy on me :slight_smile:

I am using Opensuse 13.1. The sound card is a Creative Labs Audigy (5.1 surround)

The problem I have is that when my system starts, I get very loud “white noise” from the speakers.
If I then open the sound card configuration module in YAST2 and reset all the parameters to their default settings, the problem goes away and the sound then works ok.
The problem is that the computer does not seem to remember the new settings and I have to reset them every time the computer starts.

The computer also has Ubuntu and Window$ 8. The sound is fine under both other operating systems.
I’m not sure if it is useful, but with the help of Google, I managed to get the information below although to be honest, I don’t really know what I’m looking at here :expressionless: **

cat /proc/asound/cards**
0 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia

                  HDA NVidia at 0xfcffc000 irq 17

1 [Creative ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Creative
HDA Creative at 0xfddfc000 irq 16

lspci | grep -i audio
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GK106 HDMI Audio Controller (rev a1)
02:00.0 Audio device: Creative Labs Device 0012 (rev 01)

aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Creative [HDA Creative], device 0: ALC898 Analog [ALC898 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

My Nvidia graphics card has HDMI audo, but this is not used.

I’m not sure what other commands I could to type in order to provide you with more technical information.

Any assistance with this would be greatly appreciated as it is driving me mad!

Best Regards,

Dave

2

Are you sure which card you are really using?

In Yast try changing the order see if that makes a difference

Also may want to install pavucontrol to adjust sound levels for each app.

3

Thanks Gogalthorp.

The Nvidia sound card is actually disabled in YAST. The speakers are all plugged into the Creative sound card. I did install pavucontrol as you suggested, but everything looks OK. This problem is affecting all user profiles, not just my own.

I am starting to wonder if there is something wrong with my hardware or perhaps the install of opensuse, as recently, I have noticed a few other strange things with the system.
These may not be related to the sound problem, but sometimes, the whole system freezes when I am using Firefox (hard reset required), also I am getting very slow transfer speeds to my external HDD via the USB2 sockets.

The sound card is actually only a few weeks old, but I may have to consider replacing it as it is currently occupying the only PCI express slot on the motherboard (which I may need for a USB3 interface card). Maybe If I do replace the sound card there might be one that is better suited or more compatible with Linux.

I will run the memtest86 program later on this evening to see if it finds any problems.

Regards,

Dave

4

Hmmm may indicate bad capacitors or power supply. Note that a actually is a switching supply meaning that it runs at a faster speed then the 60 cycle wall current. Bad capcitors may lead to noise in the system