no sound

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 2011-05-20 at 12:18 +0300, Jonathan Goodman wrote:
> Hi,
> Recently I allowed an update to Ubuntu lucid lynx and suddenly my
> computer became silent. I tried opening envy24(for my envy ice1712 card)
> -no deal. Alsa mixer from the command line 
> -doesn't exist.I tried synaptic to may-be reinstall or fix,received the
> following: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg
> --configure -a' to correct the problem. 
> I tried and received the following: parse error, in file
> '/var/lib/dpkg/updates/0001' near line 0:
>  field name `state.VT82xx' must be followed by colon
> force corrected the colon tried again and received this:dpkg: parse
> error, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/updates/0001' near line 128:
>  missing package name
> (1) I don't understand what package name to put there.
> (2) It seems to me that there will be an endless stream of error
> messages.
> Before this update every thing worked really well. Now I'm left severely
> in the lurch.
> I am a musician windows user (not software technician)  who was forced
> by circumstances to setup a Linux machine for my partner to print a
> music collection and establish a reference library for devotional music
> with recordings coupled with musical notes and text.
> Since he isn't able to do any of the work himself I have to wander in a
> place where I know nothing.
> I will very much appreciate guidance.
> 
> Sincerely,
>                         Jonathan

1. I tried to upgrade from Maverick to Natty and need to restore
Maverick from a backup, because the upgrade does break my Edubuntu
Studio.

2. I don't know when there was a change for all Linux distros I tested,
but there was a change. Envy24 cards don't work out of the box with
current Linux distros anymore.

For Lucid edit ...

/usr/share/alsa/cards/ICE1712.conf

[snip]
<confdir:pcm/front.conf>

ICE1712.pcm.front.0 {
	@args [ CARD ]
	@args.CARD {
		type string
	}
	type route
	ttable.0.0 1
	ttable.1.1 1
	slave.pcm {
		type hw
		card $CARD
	}
        #### fix PA issue ####
        slave.format S32_LE
        slave.channels 10
        ######################
}
[snip]

For Maverick it's much more complicated. Additionally I needed to
pseudo-disable PulseAudio.

The best thing would be to get rid of PulseAudio, but this isn't easy to
do without breaking dependencies.

Hth,

Ralf