No sound, was: Problems using the sound card on My Thinkpad

David david at kenpro.com.au
Wed Dec 28 08:18:29 UTC 2005


On Tue, Dec 27, 2005 at 10:36:26PM -0500, Noah Dain wrote:
> On 12/27/05, David <david at kenpro.com.au> wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 11:27:07PM -0600, David Strauss wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2005-12-26 at 23:21 -0400, Ryan Thompson wrote:
> > > > I have been using Ubuntu Linux for all of 3 and a half hours when I
> > > > posted this.  I am trying to listen to some CD's but the system is
> > > > telling me that It can't find my sound card.  This makes no sense to me
> > > > because at the login screen I get the Startup sound.  Can anyone point
> > > > me in the right direction?
> > >
> > > There are different sound systems in Linux, namely OSS, ALSA, ARTS, and
> > > ESD. GNOME in Ubuntu uses ESD by default. Try running your program with
> > > ESD (easiest option) or configuring ALSA (better option). There are
> > > guides to configuring ESD and ALSA together on the forums.
> > >
> >
> >
> > which guide do you suggest? I'm having serious trouble with sound and everything
> > I've tried so far has ended in hisssssss :(
> >
> > David
> >

Unfortunately I'm not getting any sound at all! It was the original poster 
that had some sound. In my case, the output of lspci -v is:

0000:00:0b.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy LS
        Subsystem: Creative Labs: Unknown device 100a
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at d400 [size=32]
        Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2

I've included the output of lsmod at the end of this email.

Can you give me a clue how I figure out chipset and/or driver info? I 
can't help but think that my problem is in the driver or lack of it, but 
I'm not sure where to start looking :( So far, google hasn't helped me.

thanks

David.


> 
> If you get the login sound, then you most likely have a sound device
> that does not do hardware mixing, thus only one process can use the
> sound device at any given instance.  This is where sound daemons like
> esd, artsd, jack, and that newer one come in (polyp?)
> 
> The sound daemon grabs the sound device and then other processes bind
> to the sound daemon, allowing multiple processes to output sound
> concurrently.
> 
> However, not all programs support the various sound daemons, so this
> "solution" sux.
> 
> Alternatives:
> 1) use oss.  Not recommended but oss does mixing in software if need be.
> 2) use alsa oss emulation.  Better than choice 1, as oss is deprecated
> in favour of alsa.
> 3) use alsa mixing libs via a .asoundrc file.
> 
> I prefer choice 3, with alsa oss emulation available for older apps
> that don't do alsa yet.  This covers all bases without having to deal
> with a sound daemon.
> 
> But what .asoundrc file to use?  We first need to know what chip your
> sound device is using.  As sound is working, post the output from
> "lsmod".  You can also post the output from "lspci -v".  Once that is
> determined, we can play the "rumage around alsa's site trying to find
> a .asoundrc file that may very well work for you" game.
> 

lsmod:
Module                  Size  Used by
binfmt_misc            10888  1
rfcomm                 34972  0
l2cap                  22404  5 rfcomm
bluetooth              43012  4 rfcomm,l2cap
cpufreq_userspace       4444  0
cpufreq_stats           5124  0
freq_table              4484  1 cpufreq_stats
cpufreq_powersave       1920  0
cpufreq_ondemand        5916  0
cpufreq_conservative     6820  0
video                  16004  0
tc1100_wmi              6916  0
sony_acpi               5516  0
pcc_acpi               11392  0
hotkey                  9508  0
dev_acpi               11396  0
i2c_acpi_ec             5760  0
button                  6672  0
battery                 9604  0
container               4608  0
ac                      4996  0
ipv6                  217408  19
floppy                 52692  0
pcspkr                  3652  0
rtc                    11832  0
usblp                  11776  0
snd_ca0106             27172  3
snd_ac97_codec         72188  1 snd_ca0106
snd_pcm_oss            46368  0
snd_mixer_oss          16128  2 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                78344  3 snd_ca0106,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer              21764  1 snd_pcm
snd                    48644  10 
snd_ca0106,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore               9184  2 snd
snd_page_alloc         10120  2 snd_ca0106,snd_pcm
ohci1394               30644  0
ieee1394               90936  1 ohci1394
i2c_viapro              7696  0
via686a                17816  0
i2c_sensor              3456  1 via686a
i2c_core               19728  4 i2c_acpi_ec,i2c_viapro,via686a,i2c_sensor
i2c_core               19728  4 i2c_acpi_ec,i2c_viapro,via686a,i2c_sensor
shpchp                 80612  0
pci_hotplug            24628  1 shpchp
via_agp                 9472  1
agpgart                32328  1 via_agp
dm_mod                 50364  1
tsdev                   7616  0
evdev                   9088  0
parport_pc             31812  1
lp                     11460  0
parport                32072  2 parport_pc,lp
mousedev               10912  2
psmouse                26116  0
md                     40656  0
ext3                  115976  1
jbd                    48536  1 ext3
thermal                13192  0
processor              23100  1 thermal
fan                     4740  0
via_rhine              20356  0
mii                     5248  1 via_rhine
uhci_hcd               28048  0
usbcore               104316  3 usblp,uhci_hcd
ide_cd                 36996  0
cdrom                  33952  1 ide_cd
ide_disk               16128  3
ide_generic             1664  0
via82cxxx              12188  1
ide_core              125268  4 ide_cd,ide_disk,ide_generic,via82cxxx
unix                   24624  761
vesafb                  8088  0
capability              5000  0
commoncap               6784  1 capability
vga16fb                12232  1
vgastate                8320  1 vga16fb
softcursor              2432  2 vesafb,vga16fb
cfbimgblt               2944  2 vesafb,vga16fb
cfbfillrect             3840  2 vesafb,vga16fb
cfbcopyarea             4480  2 vesafb,vga16fb
fbcon                  34176  72
tileblit                2560  1 fbcon
font                    8448  1 fbcon
bitblit                 5248  1 fbcon





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