Sound Problems in Fully Updated 8.04

[Nigel Henry]

On Tuesday 02 December 2008 18:03, Roger Benham wrote:
> Sorry to take so long but winter creates pressing tasks and the computer in
> question is in someone else's cabin. She is happy using XP though her
> installation has already been invaded by things that really slow it down.
> I'm trying to persuade her to use Ubuntu but the lack of sound for movies
> deters her!
>
> roger at rogerbenham3:~$ hspci -v

That should be lspci -v, but lspci -vn gives a bit more info
> bash: hspci: command not found
> roger at rogerbenham3:~$ cat /proc/asound/cards
> 0 [CMI8738 ]: CMI8738-MC6 - C-Media CMI8738
> C-Media CMI8738 (model 55) at 0x9800, irq 5
> 1 [Audigy ]: Audigy - Audigy 1 [SB0090]
> Audigy 1 [SB0090] (rev.3, serial:0x511102) at 0x9000, irq 11

Ahaa! 2 soundcards, and I believe that Pulseaudio if installed has problems 
with multiple soundcards. I use Kubuntu (no pulseaudio), not Ubuntu, and I 
think that Pulseaudio is installed as default on Ubuntu 8.04. First thing I'd 
suggest is to disable Pulseaudio. This is easy, just sudo synaptic, and look 
for the package alsa-plugins-pulseaudio, and remove it.

The post from Frans makes a good suggestion, in checking that the speakers are 
connected to the default soundcard, as you have 2 installed.

Assuming that you have now disabled pulseaudio by removing the 
alsa-plugins-pulseaudio package, you should now be able to use alsamixer to 
access both soundcards.

Just typing alsamixer should display the settings for card0, which is the C 
Media one.

Type alsamixer -c 1 to get the alsamixer settings for the Audigy card

It is normal for audio apps to use card0, which in your case is the C Media 
one, so make sure that the speakers are connected to this one when checking 
out the sounds.

See how this goes for the moment.

Nigel.