Sound worked, now doesn't...

[Toe Knee]

Hi,
I have a problem, my sound stopped working. It was working but some sound was missing so I played around w/ the mixer and the missing sound appeared, although it was a bit distorted. I decided to play around with the mixer again whilst listening to some music. When it got to the end of the track, the sound stopped and hasn't started since. I've rebooted, still not working. I checked lsmod and the drivers are loaded. I checked Kmix and made sure everything was turned up and not muted (but hovering over the docked icon only shows volume at 23%) In Aumix everything is up full except for master (73) and PCM (69) even when I put them up full nothing comes out. The Mute menu has Mute All ticked, when I un tick it everything goes to 0, when I put everything back up and save, but there is still no sound.
Does anyone have any ideas?

Distro : MDK 9.1
Soundcard : VT8233 (AC97 AUDIO CONTROLLER)
Module : snd-via82xx
Alternative drivers : via82cxxx_audio
Mixers : Aumix KMix
Programs used to test sound : xmms, frozen bubble, logging in and out of KDE and XMAME

Thanks in advance for any help...

[arn0ld]

sometimes this works
lsof|grep dsp
if this show and entry, kill the associated pid - probably artsd

[Toe Knee]

I've just done that and killed all the processes that it brought up, still no sound. :(
Any idea's how to get the deafult sound levels? or any other suggestions.
Thanks again...

[mdwatts]

Are all the required soundcard modules loaded?

lsmod (list loaded modules)

Try adding the user to the audio group as that is preferred over changing the permissions of /dev/dsp.

[deanrantala]

Your using ALSA drivers. ALSA is usually one big headache.

This is most likely due to one of two things...

You got another device or card in your system that is sharing resources with the sound card. I have found ALSA to be _exceptionally_ buggy with cards using shared resources.

or...

One of the many useless ALSA mixer setting are not set right. Open the ALSA mixer GUI (NOT kmix, aumix, or the gnome mixer) and play with those settings.

I fave found ALSA to be more headache than it is worth. I can almost assure you that swithcing to an OSS sound module will clear this up.

Also, What desktop are you using? Gnome? KDE? Are you getting a message about "failed to open /dev/mixer" or "arts sound server failed to initialize"? And also make sure you have the proper sound plugin enabled on the media player you are using. For instance, if you are using xmms, be sure you have the ALSA sound output plugin eneabled. Same goes for Xine, mplayer, and others.

[motub]

Could you log into GNOME briefly (if you use MDK 9.1 and have KDE, you should have GNOME) or any other WM available, and try Frozen Bubble again?

Just to make sure that it's an artsd problem and not that your soundcard or speakers died unexpectedly?

[Toe Knee]

Hi again,
So I checked that toeknee was a user of audio, Yes I am. lsmod still shows the modules as loaded. I ran alsamixer in Konsole, set all the volumes full, tried playing a song in xmms, came through but mega distorted so I turned the volumes down a bit. Working fine. :) So I change tab's in mozilla to post that everything is working but when I click on the tab, the sound dies again. :( Tried running alsamixer again, sound not coming back, checked lsof|grep dsp, it returned
mozilla-b 3505 toeknee mem REG 3,5 10648 700580 /usr/lib/libartsdsp.so.0.0.0
gconfd-2 3513 toeknee mem REG 3,5 10648 700580 /usr/lib/libartsdsp.so.0.0.0
mozilla-b 3514 toeknee mem REG 3,5 10648 700580 /usr/lib/libartsdsp.so.0.0.0
mozilla-b 3515 toeknee mem REG 3,5 10648 700580 /usr/lib/libartsdsp.so.0.0.0
mozilla-b 3516 toeknee mem REG 3,5 10648 700580 /usr/lib/libartsdsp.so.0.0.0
mozilla-b 3518 toeknee mem REG 3,5 10648 700580 /usr/lib/libartsdsp.so.0.0.0
esd 3521 toeknee mem REG 3,5 10648 700580 /usr/lib/libartsdsp.so.0.0.0
mozilla-b 3541 toeknee mem REG 3,5 10648 700580 /usr/lib/libartsdsp.so.0.0.0
I would kill mozilla now but then I'd lose this post, :( And it was working when mozilla was open, just changing tabs killed the sound.
And I have tried sound in IceWM, still not working.
Thanks for the help...

[deanrantala]

Heres a set of instructions that will probably work.

1)Go to the mandrake control center. Click on "hardware" on the left hand side and in the list that appears to the right, highlight your sound card entry.

2) At the bottom of the info dialog that shows info about the sound card, you will see a button that says "configure module". In the window that appears, click on "let me pick any driver". In the next window that appears, you will see "snd-via82xx" highlighted - thats your sound card. Now scroll the list further to the top, and you will see an entry that says just "via82xx" (without the snd- prefix). Select that one and hit OK. Hit OK again, and now goto the "system" tab on the right-hand side of the mandrake control center. Select "DrakXServices helps you eneble and disable services" icon.

3) In the widow that comes up, You will see an "ALSA" entry. Un-check the "start on boot" button, and hit the "stop" button. Now hit OK and close the control center down. You should have sound now:)

[Hayl]

if you can, you should atttempt to get ALSA working properly.

the OSS system is deprecated in the linux kernel beginning with linux 2.6.x, and will eventually be removed in favour of ALSA (2.6 has both) so... eventually you will have to use it.

(it is as easy to get ALSA working in a 2.6 kernel, as OSS currently is - just select the option and it works. you won't have to compile external ALSA modules as you do now with 2.4.x series kernels.)

[Toe Knee]

Hi,
Yeah, I wanted to get ALSA working if I could but I tried what deanrantala said anyway and that didn't work for me.
I'm a bit confused as I got it working about an hour ago and when it has stopped I am still unable to get it back doing all the same things. :(
Thanks again.

[Hayl]

do you get errors when you try to use alsaplayer from the command line?

are the modules all loaded?

here is a list of what modules i have loaded for ALSA

snd-emu10k1 72628 5
snd-pcm 63968 2 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-timer 15328 0 [snd-pcm]
snd-rawmidi 14176 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-util-mem 1408 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-page-alloc 5164 0 [snd-emu10k1 snd-pcm]
snd-seq-device 4448 0 [snd-emu10k1 snd-rawmidi]
snd-ac97-codec 38016 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-hwdep 4768 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd 31172 2 [snd-mixer-oss snd-emu10k1 snd-pcm snd-timer snd-rawmidi snd-util-mem snd-seq-device snd-ac97-codec snd-hwdep]
soundcore 4036 5 [snd]

[Toe Knee]

Hi,
I typed alsaplayer into Konsole and it saidbash: alsaplayer: command not found lsmod shows snd-seq-oss 31104 0 (unused)
snd-seq-midi-event 5640 0 [snd-seq-oss]
snd-seq 42608 2 [snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event]
snd-pcm-oss 43556 0 (unused)
snd-mixer-oss 14488 1 [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-via82xx 14092 3
snd-ac97-codec 40160 0 [snd-via82xx]
snd-pcm 77536 2 [snd-pcm-oss snd-via82xx]
snd-timer 18376 0 [snd-seq snd-pcm]
snd-mpu401-uart 4396 0 [snd-via82xx]
snd-rawmidi 17600 0 [snd-mpu401-uart]
snd-seq-device 5832 0 [snd-seq-oss snd-seq snd-rawmidi]
snd-page-alloc 7732 0 [snd-via82xx snd-pcm]
snd 40868 0 [snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-via82xx snd-ac97-codec snd-pcm snd-timer snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device]
soundcore 6276 0 [snd]

Thanks.

[deanrantala]

True, but before they remove OSS from the kernel, thet got to improve it's support, performance, and usability...

1)Try using a multi channel audio card with ALSA (i.e a SB Live or Audigy) If you manage to get something besides a buzzing sound from the center speaker, let me know. And if you also get Multi channel playback working, Please PM me on how you did it.

2)Better system wide support - not just "OSS Emulation". 90% of your software uses OSS output. And it is more than often a problem that your apps are never configured right to use ALSA.

3) Supply a ALSA mixer GUI that displays the controls in "people language" and not as if you are an audio engineer. (i.e. "Front", "Rear", "Wave out", "CD Digital", and so on)

Yes I have done my research. But at the moment, ALSA is still in very much of an "evolving" (or developement) state. It is also proveably more buggy than OSS.

When the new kernels loose all support for OSS, I'll either hand-compile it, or I'll just go back to Windows and mac. I'm tired of linux developers shoving cr*p down my throut that I don't need or does not work the way it should.

[Toe Knee]

So,
I've done the one thing I didn't want to do. Re-install... It solved the problem but now my gf is going to do the windows just works gloat all night.
Oh well.