HOW TO: Solve your LMDE audio issues

[pristinepeak]

For me surprisingly, this way worked out.

1) I "killed" pulse-audio and removed it totally.

2) Restarted my computer.

3) Made sure that only ALSA was installed.

4) Re-installed Pulse Audio.

5) My Skype works perfectly now; strangely after I have started Skype after suspending or hibernating my system. It works so I am not complaining now.

LMDE is awesome otherwise except for this little nag though.

[wm_commercial]

i managed to remove pulseaudio without too much trouble (had to run twice since i forgot to loose the tray icon i think), but i have no sound still.

this is a creative soundblaster audigy mp3+ oem card and it works on 3 other versions of mint.

alsa-base, alsa-utils, libasound2, linux-sound-base, gstreamer0.10-alsa, libasound2-plugins, libalsaplayer0, libsnack2-alsa, libsdl1.2debian, and a couple others seem to be installed properly.

but i also have xfce4-volumed and gnome-audio, which i'm unsure about, but are there by default. it could be i'm not using the mixer correctly, i only choose the master volume as a control.

i've seen some notes about using other software sources and verifying a core, but missed the particulars...not to thrilled about adding packages marked hack and the ppa never properly loaded anyway.

alsa-utils is in the running services btw, i added a gnome volume control to the session & startup - application autostart menu and have been switching between that and the xfce volume daemon with no change either way.

if it's related i'm not sure, but the sound recorder was unable to start, but i haven't even plugged in the mic yet.

also, i'm not a big fan of having multiple media players...i don't mind one for vid and a separate one for audio, but these extra players have got to go, so i would really appreciate some info on that.

thanks in advance.

*EDIT
there were some updates today that fixed the audio as it is described above...no pulseaudio (not sure if i even want/need it) rhythmbox is now playing tunes!! yay...on to other stuff lol, tyvm dev team!!

[kenhall5551]

Thanks for the fix. Worked like a charm!

[Ghis1964]

Thx;)
The fix works. Ofcourse one needs to be a bit more than noobe, which I'm barely still noobe yet.

I was trying to get a standard gui mixer from the usual app-store (synaptic) , read all warnings (there wasn't any), install the only mixer found (pulse-sh-t-kit), everything went hay-wire since.

I'm on pclinux-lmde. I could've gone to my other boot AntiX-lmde and get/copy all the files from there to fix everything, but this fix here was the quickest yet;)

from lmde-freak:

but I have all the useless $ or S and sudos everyone are posting just to confuse the hell out the genius everyone already HAS running fine (no-offence, but there, I've finnaly said it)
and put that in the terminal as root (root-terminal, or su any terminal of your choice)

killall pulseaudio
apt-get purge pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils
gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio libpulse-browse0 paman pavumeter pavucontrol
mv /etc/asound.conf /etc/asound.conf-bak
rm ~/.pulse-cookie
rm -r ~/.pulse

or a one-liner like this:

killall pulseaudio && apt-get purge pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio libpulse-browse0 paman pavumeter pavucontrol && mv /etc/asound.conf /etc/asound.conf-bak && rm ~/.pulse-cookie && rm -r ~/.pulse

answered Y (yes) to all the request from the last 3.

and re-install ALSA... (from synaptic: just to see if an ordinary gui-install would work, as a noobe (me) would do. Yes I could only add one more line to that terminal session too as && install alsa && reboot).... to be sure to have something after reboot (so I'd reboot only once) and the sound came back everywhere;)

Thanx again
Now I can go back to this conky-conquest (conkyquest) and trying to have something pretty that work there lololol

Peace;)

---edit---
nnnnnnot working again after another reboot.... grrrrr

[mikecz]

I had to make sure I put the right option for my computer (an HP Pavillion HDX 16 laptop) into /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf:

options snd-hda-intel model=hp-hdx

I also had some luck with:

options snd-hda-intel model=hp-m4

But, obviously, the first one worked best.

For anyone who is down on PulseAudio: you obviously haven't tried it recently. It is much better behaved in the most recent releases (again, once you get the HW drivers and ALSA set properly).

I will admit that it took me a bit of flailing about to get everything working properly under PulseAudio, but once I got the right alsa-base option, and figured out that in the ALSA volume control you have to click on the button so its red to select the microphone as active. Maybe I'm dense, but it really wasn't obvious.

I did find this site with ALSA-related info:

http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sound/alsa/

And specifically this file:

http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation ... Models.txt

But it doesn't have a clear list of what the various snd-hda-intel models are that I could find. However, I did find this old post on the Ubuntu forums that might be of use:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1043568

I am insanely happy that I got it all to work and am glad to share what little I figured out so other people won't take as long as I did to get the most out of their hardware.

MikeC

[exodus454]

Thanks for this thread! After some screwing around, I finally got sound working from the headphone jack on my macbook. Incase anyone's interested, here's what did it for me -

Code: Select all

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

Then add -

Code: Select all

options snd-hda-intel model=intel-mac-v2 probe_mask=1 position_fix=1

to the end.

Now I have fully working headphone jack, and it even switches between laptop speakers and external when you plug something in!

[mankapo]

The "options" depend on you laptop-model. For my Lenovo Thinkpad R61 the option "options snd-hda-intel model=generic" helped

viewtopic.php?f=49&t=91055

[Kassad]

I had to make sure I put the right option for my computer (an HP Pavillion HDX 16 laptop) into /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf:

options snd-hda-intel model=hp-hdx

I also had some luck with:

options snd-hda-intel model=hp-m4

But, obviously, the first one worked best.

For anyone who is down on PulseAudio: you obviously haven't tried it recently. It is much better behaved in the most recent releases (again, once you get the HW drivers and ALSA set properly).

I will admit that it took me a bit of flailing about to get everything working properly under PulseAudio, but once I got the right alsa-base option, and figured out that in the ALSA volume control you have to click on the button so its red to select the microphone as active. Maybe I'm dense, but it really wasn't obvious.

I did find this site with ALSA-related info:

http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sound/alsa/

And specifically this file:

http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation ... Models.txt

But it doesn't have a clear list of what the various snd-hda-intel models are that I could find. However, I did find this old post on the Ubuntu forums that might be of use:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1043568

I am insanely happy that I got it all to work and am glad to share what little I figured out so other people won't take as long as I did to get the most out of their hardware.

MikeC

I concur with the above and side with those who say that Pulseaudio is not to be blamed for sound problems in LMDE, Linux Mint or in general Ubuntu based distributions. Please, read the wiki entry for Pulseaudio, it is quite educational. It is not problem if you fall back to ALSA but that is not a professional solution, though. I did that myself before researching deeper into the problem. To make it short, it is rather a configurational problem one or other kind. I can just make statements regarding HDA-Intel based audio, though.

It seems the most helpful to edit /etc/modeprobe.d/alsa-base.conf adding or adjusting that line:

options snd-hda-intel model=(the model related to your chip, e.g. 'hp' in my case, having AL260 chip)

You get your card and chip id with 'aplay -l' and match it with the help of the list below:

http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation ... Models.txt

Your computer may be something else than you should use but it is indifferent, the chip you have should match.

It helped some people to check /etc/asound.conf or .asoundrc in your home directory and to modify it as suggested. I have something else there but it does not seem to make any difference.

Also, I found quite the following thread quite instructive:

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.p ... 9-p-8.html

[on4aa]

I was also having my deal of audio problems with Skype not willing to use my LogiTech C250 webcam microphone nor my rear internal mic on LMDE XFCE.
until I learned of this little jewel from the Arch fora...

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install pavucontrol

It allows one to configure sound channels in a GUI.
I am now very happy to see Skype automatically grab the webcam mic.

[andreazZz]

Hi there!
After reading this topic I tried to remove Pulse and install ALSA. Finally I got it all installed, but now the Sound applet won't show up. I tried a lot of things, but it won't come back.
- Restored default applets
- deleted all items I don't know in applet location (I didn't delete the apps in use and needed

When I select the applet in Cinnamon settings, 2 applets change position (Update and a corrupted CPU applet I can't find the folder of).

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[Oscar799]

Hi there!
After reading this topic I tried to remove Pulse and install ALSA. Finally I got it all installed, but now the Sound applet won't show up. I tried a lot of things, but it won't come back.
- Restored default applets
- deleted all items I don't know in applet location (I didn't delete the apps in use and needed

When I select the applet in Cinnamon settings, 2 applets change position (Update and a corrupted CPU applet I can't find the folder of).

Any ideas?

Thanks!

It would be best to start a thread with your question here viewforum.php?f=196 rather than tack a support question onto the end of a HowTo guide

[andreazZz]

@Oscar799: You're completely right, but since it has a relation with this topic (I followed the How to), I thought it was better to place a comment here, rather than make a new topic.