SOLVED: Lost Sound with Julia

fixrman · Post by **fixrman** » Sat Sep 03, 2011 8:30 am

I use Alsamixer with Julia. I have lost sound and the sound card keeps being listed as onboard nVidia even though I have a SoundBlaster! card that I have been using since the build.

I thought perhaps it was a Firefox issue since it was recently updated to 4.0.1, but the sound loss could easily have been a bad shut down due to a power outage from Irene; my UPS has lost most of its capacity. I had a similar issue a while back and was able to figure out the problem fairly quickly, but I cannot keep the SB card as the default; it seems to never "save" as it did before.

Any help suggestions?

Gerd50 · Post by **Gerd50** » Sun Sep 04, 2011 5:36 pm

Hello fixrman,

can't you disable the Nvidia onboard chip in your Bios?

fixrman · Post by **fixrman** » Sun Sep 04, 2011 5:44 pm

Already did do. I cannot see why it keeps defaulting to it.

Gerd50 · Post by **Gerd50** » Sun Sep 04, 2011 6:04 pm

hmm, that's hard to understand. What do you get with

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cat /proc/asound/cards

?

fixrman · Post by **fixrman** » Sun Sep 04, 2011 8:10 pm

Output:

0 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xfbffc000 irq 19
1 [CA0106 ]: CA0106 - CA0106
Audigy SE [SB0570] at 0xbf00 irq 20

Which seems to be why I have 2 cards vying for attention. I have the nVidia onboard disabled in BIOS, but it still seems to want to default to that card.

Gerd50 · Post by **Gerd50** » Mon Sep 05, 2011 4:48 am

In mintmenu > Multimedia you should have pavucontrol. There in the tab Configuration > Profile both cards should be listed.
For the Nvidia chip choose 'Off' in it's profile.

fixrman · Post by **fixrman** » Mon Sep 05, 2011 8:41 am

I do not have Multimedia, just Sound and Video. I cannot select a profile from there and if I uncheck the NV card it shows up when opening the GUI anyway. I have to keep looking because I am surely missing something.

Gerd50 · Post by **Gerd50** » Mon Sep 05, 2011 9:22 am

I think because my system is in german and my english is under all pig my description is bad

Now i found pavucontrol = Pulse Audio Volume Control. You can open the dalogue box of it via Terminal with 'pavucontrol'

fixrman · Post by **fixrman** » Mon Sep 05, 2011 6:36 pm

Ahh, Pulse Audio as I am pretty sure sound didn't work with that. I'll boot back into Mint to check.

*No, I went into terminal and tried to run Pulse Audio but it doesn't exist. That was I believe a problem with sound early on, so I dumped it.

fixrman · Post by **fixrman** » Mon Sep 05, 2011 9:07 pm

OK, I am at a loss. I don't know what has happened - was it a Firefox update that caused the sound loss or the power outage?

I guess I have to wait to see if anybody has any other ideas. i went into SPM and added somethings pertaining to alsamixer, rebooted and still no sound. I don't know why the nVidia HDMI shows, I have never used it.

fixrman · Post by **fixrman** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 6:44 am

Any other information I can give, guys? Still working without sound.

jlsmith722 · Post by **jlsmith722** » Sat Sep 17, 2011 4:17 pm

fixrman:
I had a similar problem with sound suddenly no longer working.
I stumbled on a solution. In a terminal run:

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$sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils reset

It worked magic for me, but I am running LMDE, your mileage may vary.
I found this from a buried readme file in /usr/share/doc/alsa-utils/ There may be an equivalent file there for Julia.

Good Luck
Jim

fixrman · Post by **fixrman** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:13 pm

No joy, Jim. Command not found.

I wish I knew more...

fixrman · Post by **fixrman** » Tue Sep 20, 2011 7:20 am

Incidentally, output from lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 Host Bridge Alternate
00:02.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (ext gfx port 0)
00:09.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 4)
00:0a.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 5)
00:11.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 SATA Controller [IDE mode] (rev 40)
00:12.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:12.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 42)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 IDE Controller (rev 40)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 LPC host controller (rev 40)
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge (rev 40)
00:14.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI2 Controller
00:15.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Device 43a0
00:15.1 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Device 43a1
00:16.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:16.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor HyperTransport Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor Miscellaneous Control
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 10h Processor Link Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Device 06c4 (rev a3)
01:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation GF100 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
02:00.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 03)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 06)
04:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs CA0106 Soundblaster
04:0e.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
05:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB362/JMB363 Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
05:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB362/JMB363 Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)

I saw a post/workaround from Ubuntu forums, as this can happen at times that for some reason Mint defaults to HDMI, but I haven't found anything that works yet.

jlsmith722 · Post by **jlsmith722** » Tue Sep 20, 2011 10:30 am

fixrman:
I have not been able to find the reference but I remember reading that i you are using Alsamixer you should install alsa-utils. It is in Synaptic so easy to install and then try the

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$sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils reset

again. Other than that I am stumped.

fixrman · Post by **fixrman** » Tue Sep 20, 2011 8:17 pm

Thanks for your help, but that command does not work for me. Alsa-utils is already installed.

I think I will uninstall all alsamixer parts and try a reinstall.

fixrman · Post by **fixrman** » Sat Sep 24, 2011 7:43 am

After trying everything I could think of to repair this issue, I am left with the high likelihood that the sound card has failed. Booting into Windows leaves me soundless as well. There have been no BIOS changes that would eliminate the card. The only thing I have not done is replace the card with a known good card that I could borrow from the old box.

Since I built this unit in late March, I should be able to return the card as defective; I'll try the swap perhaps later today.

fixrman · Post by **fixrman** » Sun Sep 25, 2011 6:18 pm

I purchased a SBAudigy to go with this build since I don't use anything other than 2 speaks and a sub. The drivers (CA0106) for the card were likely only good until they were updated, possibly
by me or in a Mint Update. Whatever the reason, the card did not work with either Windows or Linux. Rather than swap sound cards, I decided to remove the card and use onboard sound. It works fine for what I need.

Incidentally, the card I bought is listed as being a problem due to discontinued driver support. Had I known this, I would have left the $25.00 off the build.

Thanks to all who tried to help.

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