Mint Debian-sound issue with Vioteh 3100+

[timmn1]

I have a Biostar Viotech 3100+ motherboard on which I installed Mint Debian. I'm having an issue with the sound circuitry, it will play system sounds, and will play the audio from streaming video, but if I try and play an audio CD or a DVD I get no sound. The video portion works with a DVD.

I have no idea even where to start.

Thanks.

This is the relevant portion of the output from lspci -vvnn:

80:01.0 Audio device [0403]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT1708/A [Azalia HDAC] (VIA High Definition Audio Controller) [1106:3288] (rev 10)
Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device [1565:8109]
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 32 bytes
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 17
Region 0: Memory at febfc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel

[Oscar799]

Moved here from Hardware Support

[ej64]

I'm almost sure it has to do with PulseAudio. Maybe this helps: HOW TO: Solve your LMDE audio issues (Some decent searching before posting is recommended ... )

with my NB (VT1708/A, Azalia, too) I had serious sound issues -- since I use Mint XFCE (without PulseAudio) anything's fine. Perhaps uninstalling PA will cure your issues, too.

[timmn1]

I looked for an asound.conf file in /etc, there isn't one, so I made one, and put in all the statements from the How To. It didn't work.

There are asound.config_jack and asound.config_oss files in /usr/share/doc/linasound2-plugin, those are the only two asound.config files other than the one I just made. I didn't do anything with them

I do, however have this, it isn't verbatim, at boot time, it scrolls by so fast I can barely read it, but it's repeated about 10 times:
amimixer: mixer: hw0: load error: invalid argument

I did search for sound problems with the Viotech 3100+ in Debian in google, all of the problems that came up were that they had no sound at all.

EDIT: I found this command which repeats what happens at boot up, the entire thing follows:

/etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart
Shutting down ALSA...warning: 'alsactl store' failed with error message 'alsactl: get_control:239: Cannot read control info '2,0,0,Front Playback Volume,0': Invalid argument'...failed.
Setting up ALSA...amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
amixer: Mixer hw:0 load error: Invalid argument
done.

Someday, maybe I'll figure out exactly what the hell I'm doing.

[timmn1]

I don't know exactly what happened, but it sort of magically started working. The error messages went away, and I can now play audio CDs, haven't tried DVDs yet.

Either something I did previously just started to work, or something else happened, but what I don't know.

I hate it when stuff like this happens, if it had started to work after I had done something, I could have said that maybe I had learned something, but this way, I'm no better off than I was before.

[kpearsonxyz]

Did you update your system in the meantime? If so, something you updated may have solved the problem for you... or for you in conjunction with a change you made.

[timmn1]

I did nothing, the only updates that were done was when I first installed LMDE.

I have no idea why it didn't work before, I have no idea why it works now.

I guess I could take everything back to the beginning and see if I can figure out what made it work, I just can't spend the time to do that now.

I guess, I'll just have to be happy it works.

[kpearsonxyz]

I guess, I'll just have to be happy it works.

In the Linux Mint podcast I listened to today, one comment was, "The new Windows phone has some issues with USB, etc." and the response was, "Yeah, I guess plugging in my Android phone and it just working every time is too easy. I should be changing so I'm not so happy with it."

Made me laugh.
(quotes done from my old memory - - I'm 55)

[timmn1]

I have an idea what happened, which is better than nothing, while trying something else (don't ask) it seems that I inadvertently updated LMDE with packages that didn't show up in nintupdate, and that apparently fixed the problem.

See my next post, http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=59467 for more about that.