sound card detected, but no sound...

[anthony baldwin]

Hi,

I wrote about this last week...Suddenly my sound just stopped about two 
weeks ago.
No errors or anything, it just got all garbledy while listening to a song
on a migente.com profile (like myspace, only in Spanish), so I turned the
speakers off, and, the next time I tried to listen to anything on the 
machine, like
the next day...no sound.
I thought maybe something fried the on-board audio controller, so, I 
purchased
a new sound card, which arrived today.
I installed it, and, apparently it is detected, but, I still have no sound.
Please advise.

I did lspci, and it gives me both, the on-board sound, and the new card,
I just bought:

0000:00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SB450 HDA Audio (rev 01)
(that's the on-board audio device, and)

0000:02:03.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CM8738 
(rev 10)
(this is the new card I just acquired).


I get no errors from any audio software.
Heck, mplayer, xmms, rhythmbox, kaffeine, etc., all appear to happily 
play music, and
I can sit here and watch the pretty visual effects 'til my eyes bleed...
in complete silence.

The speakers are on.  Kmix actually allows me to choose which of the 
sound cards,
and I can choose either and turn all the volumes up to ear-splitting 
levels, and still
no sound.
No test sound from the KControl>sound & media> sound system> play test 
sound thingy.
Nothing.

I can switch the speakers for another pair, plug in headphones, or run 
the sound out to
my stereo system, and still, you guessed it...the sounds of silence.
And Simon & Garfunkel aren't playing here.

lshw gives me:

*-multimedia
             description: Audio device
             product: SB450 HDA Audio
             vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
             physical id: 14.2
             bus info: pci at 00:14.2
             version: 01
             width: 64 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=HDA Intel
             resources: iomemory:80200000-80203fff irq:201

and

*-multimedia
                description: Multimedia audio controller
                product: CM8738
                vendor: C-Media Electronics Inc
                physical id: 3
                bus info: pci at 02:03.0
                version: 10
                width: 32 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: bus_master cap_list
                configuration: driver=C-Media PCI
                resources: ioport:1000-10ff irq:201

Of course, I haven't the slightest idea what any of the output from 
either of those commands
signifies, in the grand scheme of things.

Likewise, I did
$ sudo modprobe snd-cs4236;modprobe snd-pcm-oss;modprobe 
snd-mixer-oss;modprobe snd-seq-oss

and got:

FATAL: Error inserting snd_cs4236 
(/lib/modules/2.6.15-29-386/kernel/sound/isa/cs423x/snd-cs4236.ko): No 
such device
FATAL: Error inserting snd_seq 
(/lib/modules/2.6.15-29-386/kernel/sound/core/seq/snd-seq.ko): Operation 
not permitted
WARNING: Error running install command for snd_seq
WARNING: Error inserting snd_seq_midi_event 
(/lib/modules/2.6.15-29-386/kernel/sound/core/seq/snd-seq-midi-event.ko): 
Operation not permitted
FATAL: Error inserting snd_seq_oss 
(/lib/modules/2.6.15-29-386/kernel/sound/core/seq/oss/snd-seq-oss.ko): 
Operation not permitted

Which might as well be Swahili, and since I only speak English, French, 
Spanish and Portuguese,
it doesn't help me...
I also did
$ aplay -l

and got:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC883 Analog [ALC883 Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: CMI8738MC6 [C-Media PCI CMI8738-MC6], device 0: CMI8738-MC6 
[C-Media PCI DAC/ADC]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: CMI8738MC6 [C-Media PCI CMI8738-MC6], device 1: CMI8738-MC6 
[C-Media PCI 2nd DAC]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: CMI8738MC6 [C-Media PCI CMI8738-MC6], device 2: CMI8738-MC6 
[C-Media PCI IEC958]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Something tells me that the modprobe output is most significant 
(something about FATAL!! FATAL!!
makes me think that there might be a problem there...I don't know...)

In any case...I've got a sound card...in fact, two, installed, and the 
machine doesn't seem
to have any trouble finding them, and apparently even believes that it
can successfully play sound, from all the behavior I see, but, no sound 
comes out.
This tickety-tackety of the keyboard is getting to sound lonely, and 
Comcast doesn't
have a MPB (Musica Popular Brasileira) channel...
No Legião Urbana, even.
And the Latino Rock station doesn't play enough Maná.

Oh yes, and this is on Dapper Kubuntu.
Or, at least Dapper with KDE, since I installed with the Ubuntu disk and 
installed
Kubuntu-Desktop afterwards.
Any ideas?
Anyone?
Any and all assistance appreciated, as always. (a*7)

Thanks,
Tony

-- 
http://www.baldwinlinguas.com
Translation & Interpreting