new machine; no sound

[Nigel Henry]

On Sunday 09 November 2008 09:12, Glenn Holmer wrote:
> I just bought a new machine and put Intrepid on it (32-bit), but have no
> sound.  It's a quad-core Xeon, with a Super Micro X7DA8 board, and I
> took a SoundBlaster Audigy SB1394 from my previous machine and put it in
> the new one.  I disabled the onboard AC 97 audio via jumper (verified by
> running "asoundconf list" both ways).  Volume is normal, nothing is
> muted, etc.
>
> I had a chat with Mr. Google and ended up taking this advice:
>
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=866965
>
> but it didn't help.  All the diagnostics show that the sound card is
> there (lshw, lspci, etc.) and the PulseAudio Manager looks normal (the
> volume meters move when I play a file), but there's no output.  I tested
> with headphones plugged directly into the card.  I know the card is
> still good because I swapped it back into the previous machine, plugged
> headphones into it, and played a .wav file.
>
> I'm confused because all the diagnostics seem to show that the card is
> working properly, but I have no output.  Suggestions?
>
> --
> "After the vintage season came the aftermath - and Cenbe."
> Glenn Holmer  (Q-Link: ShadowM)  http://www.lyonlabs.org

Hi Glenn.

First the caveats. I'm currently finishing off the download of Kubuntu 8.10 
(on dialup), having already dl'd Ubuntu 8.10, but neither are installed yet. 
I don't use Pulseaudio, and have it disabled in Fedora8, 9, and Kubuntu HH 
8.04. I use KDE, and am a bit clueless about Gnome.

Now there's a good start, but I have had some success in helping folks with 
sound problems.

Can you post the output of, cat /proc/asound/cards .  Your Audigy card should 
be card0. Sometimes problematic drivers can insist on grabbing card0. The 
same goes, if you have any audio related devices plugged into the USB, a 
webcam, usb midi keyboard, etc, and snd-usb-audio has grabbed card0, and your 
Audigy card has been relegated to card1.

You could post the output of,  lsmod | grep snd , just to see which modules 
are loaded.

Also have a look in /etc/group.  Your user name should be in the audio group, 
and if it exists, the pulse group.

Which app are you using to play sounds? There is usually in it's audio 
settings an option to use alsa directly, or other options. As you say though 
that the Pulse Audio Manager indicates that the file is playing, perhaps that 
bit is ok.

What does alsamixer show, when you open it as user in a terminal. I know on 
Fedora 9, it only showed one slider before I disabled Pulseaudio, and after 
that, several sliders for my hda intel card.

All I can think of at the moment.

All the best.

Nigel.