Another No Sound Problem

[Richard Craneum]

I looked and searched the web, forums and anything that crossed on my path, but I need an answer on this one....

I have a friend of mine that own a Gateway Laptop Model 675, kind of neat! It has 2 Pentium 3GHz processors and 17 inch video and a Radeon 9700 Video Card...

Anyway, we are dual booting with WXP so, I am using Madrake 10.0 Official. All installs pretty good, Graphic Card, Mouse, NIC, Screen Resolution, USB...

The Sound Card it shows in HardDrake and gives a choice of drivers, 4 to be precised. The default is snd-intel8x0 driver. The audio mixer is there, no errors comes out, if XMMS is launched the Equalizer will show like is playing, the audio mixer is not muted all is on max settings, added the user as member of the audio group and all the others. I am using ALSA.

The bad part is that sound will not come out...

Can someone shine some light on this... Any takers?

Thanks in advance...

[fatTrav]

have you run alsamixer and set volume levels to something reasonable (90ish perhaps) AND unmuted the speakers from within alsamizer [unmute the master ones and the pcm one]

alsactl store ==> will save your settings

[Richard Craneum]

As palying with the setings, yes Muted, unMuted stil no clue...

"alsactl store" That is a command? Right?

[knute]

So are the physical speakers turned up at all? or muted?

http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/Gateway/M675/3501731fv.shtml

and/or

http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/Gateway/M675/3501731su50.shtml

I'm not sure if they are linked to the same controls or not, so I provided both links.

According to FAQs, it seems that they are connected, but I can't say with 100% confidence.

HTH

[fatTrav]

Originally posted by Richard Craneum
As palying with the setings, yes Muted, unMuted stil no clue...

"alsactl store" That is a command? Right?

yep, last time i was messin with alsa 'alsactl store' was a useful command. 'M' will unmute a speaker in alsa mixer.

[Richard Craneum]

Well is not muted... I am runing out of ideas... is mind boggling. I tried to switching to OSS and no luck neither. This is the 10.0 Official Version... perhaps all the drivers are not included just in the Boxed version like it says during install... But it has to have a fix...:confused:

To answer about the speakers... Is all the way up, I done it via Key Board and Front Push buttons... All works of course in the M$ side since the Factory spended the time making it work an is guarantied to work with its original OS. No very impress with M$ neither, but is good for testing the hardware.

[knute]

Have you tried external speakers at all?

[Richard Craneum]

I do not have external speakers but I do have a headset, tried too...! Still not Sound...:confused:

[Daedrus]

Do you get any errors when trying to run alsamixer from the cli? Try running xmms from cli, any errors?

[fatTrav]

Originally posted by Daedrus
Do you get any errors when trying to run alsamixer from the cli? Try running xmms from cli, any errors?

good idea. make sure you are using the correct output plugin for xmms (it would be the alsa one)

[Daedrus]

Okay, I was having the same problem that you were having on my laptop. Everytime I ran alsaconf it would discover my card and everything would seem to go fine. But as soon as I ran alsamixer I would get a "No mixer elems found" error. I finally got this to work by going into /etc/hotplug/blacklist and entering snd-intel8x0m into the list. This is the modem portion of many intel8x0 chipsets. After this I was able to run alsamixer without errors.

If you can get alsamixer to run without errors, also make sure that both Master and PCM are not muted. This was another issues of mine as PCM was muted by default.

[Richard Craneum]

That is why is mind boggling........

Let say, it works like the volume is Muted out. No Errors, no Crashes, no Freeze, it plays the whole song and do playlist like it should, but is no Audio coming out. I think is a hardware issue with the Multimedia controller, like the sound card, has to use the control buttons on the front of the PC and the OS does not recognized. Or lets say, is like a Rack Stereo System that has the Amplifier turned off, of course all works but there is not sound on the speakers...

My next move will be going to the MCC and download all the plug-ins for all the Media Players and ALSA updates one at the time and see if that is the problem. I guess this one will be a trial and error... unless someone hits it right on the head of the nail...:D

[Daedrus]

Are you running xmms from a menu or command line? You won't necessarily see errors from a menu. What wm are you using? Try opening a mixer (kmix, alsamixer, gamix, etc) This will give you access to your volume controls. It is quite possible that one of the options is muted.

[Richard Craneum]

I check the Audio Mixer and nothing is muted. I am sorry, I should be more specific about running the player... I am not that Linux proficient yet to run from command line, I run all thru GUI. There is not errors what so ever... Just works like is supposed to work.

On my Dell Laptop D600 I had a similar problem, but Xine will not increase the volume, all it was the wrong driver. On this case I tried them all and not success.

I know, all does not make sense...

[JohnT]

Check your sound using aplay: (as root)

# aplay /usr/share/sounds/phone.wav

If the sound system is working, you will hear a phone ringing with the following console output:

Playing WAVE '/usr/share/sounds/phone.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian,
Rate 44100 Hz, Stereo

After unmuting the sound card, it is possible that normal users might be unable to use the sound card. If that's the case, then check the ownership of the sound card device (usally /dev/dsp), and then add any relevant user to the same group of the sound card .

[Richard Craneum]

I tried something similar if does help. I do not have the Laptop right now is almost 2 am here, is my friend's computer...

I used the KDE> Sound System and there is test for the Audio, it plays the KDE tune when you log in. That did not worked. If that is the same as using the command line? If not I will try that in the evening when I see him at work. Hey, I will try anything, even a Ouija Board if it does the trick:D