Mint 14 sound problems

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tedius

Mint 14 sound problems

Post by tedius »

Hello all,

I've got a Samsung N220 with Mint 14 installed. When I boot the device I hear a ping and again when I log into my account I get the chimes, but after that I get no sound what so ever. In the sound settings I've tried testing the speakers but nothing, until I plug in headphones then I get sound as usual. I have checked when I test the speakers the output is to the speakers and not to the headphones unless they are plugged in.

lspci -nn | grep -i audio

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00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller [8086:27d8] (rev 02)
cat /proc/asound/cards

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 0 [Intel          ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel
                      HDA Intel at 0xf0d00000 irq 47
I've also installed gnome-alsa-mixer and everything is as it should, i.e. good levels and no channels are muted that shouldn't be.
Any help would be great as I don't know where else to check.

Thanks
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
jamesobooth

Re: Mint 14 sound problems

Post by jamesobooth »

Sounds like lots of folks are having issues with sound on Nadia.
Get it? Get it? I crack myself up...

Anyway, I tried gnome-alsamixer and it didn't work.
Then I tried this: http://code-excerpts.blogspot.com/2012/ ... rough.html

and I have sound! Give it a whirl
anandrkris

Re: Mint 14 sound problems

Post by anandrkris »

@tedius - Hope the above solution by jamesobooth works for you.

An aside - http://community.linuxmint.com/idea/view/3844 - I have posted an idea on having a Troubleshooting wizard in Mint for audio related issues. Request you have a look at it and provide your views and if it makes sense cast your vote on it. Thanks :)Am rallying the forums to get consensus on the idea.
pgmer6809
Level 4
Level 4
Posts: 228
Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:06 pm

Re: Mint 14 sound problems

Post by pgmer6809 »

It sounds like the speakers and the headphones are being treated as two separate devices by linux.
Your sound card, must have more than one 'device' on it.
Try using the alsa tools.
1. first fire up alsamixer and have a look at the various devices that it reports. You can press F4, F5, F6 to choose input, output or all devices shown.
Make sure that everything has some volume associated with it.

2. try running

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aplay -L
to get the names of the various devices associated with your card. note that

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aplay -l
gives a different output.
I am somewhat hazy on how the various pieces of hardware get their names, but see below for the output I get on my system.
You will note that sometimes the name occurs twice once for DEV=0, and once for DEV=1. usually one is Analog, and the other is Digital.


3. Once you have names you can try commands like:
aplay -D<devicename> <soundfilename>
e.g. aplay -D default:0,0 saxaphone.wav
or possibly aplay -Ddefault:0,1 where 0,1 is the other (digital) ouput channel on card 0.
The :0 here is the card id. If you had more than one on your sysem you could say :1 :2 etc.
Some possible choices for device name are:
default, plughw, hw, surround40, ......
Work your way thru the various choices you got from the aplay -L cmd above. Let us know how it goes.

If aplay -l works, then the following cmd should also work:

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speaker-test -c2 -l3 -twav -D<devname>:0
where the -D stuff is the same as you got working with aplay.
the -c2, says two channels. the -l3 says loop 3 times. the -twav chooses the human voice (as opposed to -tsine).

If all of this works, your alsa is OK. Other sources of problems might be pulseaudio seizing control of things, or applications not connecting to the driver properly.
pgmer6809
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I have highlighted the device names portion of the output in bold.

aplay -L #Note this is UPPER case L, not lower case l. Lower case l gives a different output.
arecord -L #gives the same output as aplay -L
default
Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound server
sysdefault:CARD=PCH
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Analog
Default Audio Device
front:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Analog
Front speakers
surround40:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Analog
4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Analog
4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Analog
5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Analog
5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Analog
7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
iec958:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Digital
IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output
dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Analog
Direct sample mixing device
dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=1
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Digital
Direct sample mixing device
dsnoop:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Analog
Direct sample snooping device
dsnoop:CARD=PCH,DEV=1
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Digital
Direct sample snooping device
hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Analog
Direct hardware device without any conversions
hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=1
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Digital
Direct hardware device without any conversions
plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Analog
Hardware device with all software conversions
plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=1
HDA Intel PCH, ALC889 Digital
Hardware device with all software conversions
jepperstone

Re: Mint 14 sound problems

Post by jepperstone »

I have similar problems. Here are some outputs:

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~ $ uname -a
Linux x 3.2.0-38-generic #61-Ubuntu SMP Tue Feb 19 12:18:21 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

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~ $ aplay -l
aplay: device_list:252: no soundcards found...

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~ $ aplay -L
default
    Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound server
from lspci -v:

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00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 022e
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 10
	Memory at f6ffc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
	Capabilities: [60] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
	Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00
	Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
	Capabilities: [130] Root Complex Link
	Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel
EDIT: Some additional outputs (I don't know if they are relevant)

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~ $ pulseaudio
W: [pulseaudio] pid.c: Stale PID file, overwriting.
W: [pulseaudio] module.c: module-combine is deprecated: Please use module-combine-sink instead of module-combine!
W: [pulseaudio] module-combine.c: We will now load module-combine-sink. Please make sure to remove module-combine from your configuration.
Killed

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~ $ sudo /sbin/alsa reload
[sudo] password for root: 
Unloading ALSA sound driver modules: (none loaded).
Loading ALSA sound driver modules: (none to reload).

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~ $ inxi -A
Audio:     Card: Intel 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller
I appreciate any help at all. Please let me know if you need additional outputs. Thank you in advance!
pgmer6809
Level 4
Level 4
Posts: 228
Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:06 pm

Re: Mint 14 sound problems

Post by pgmer6809 »

I notcie that alsa does not seem to believe that you have any audio drivers loaded.
But you do have the hardware, and there is reference to kernel module
snd_hda_intel
what does

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lsmod | grep snd
show?
Also you need to have a module 'soundcore' loaded.

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lsmod | grep soundcore
should give an output.
Assuming that the above two conditions are met try running

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alsamixer
and see if it shows you any devices.

If none of the above looks promising, you are probably going to have to load some modules and test further.
Once you have figured out what modules to load, then you are going to want to edit the various config files so that the modules get loaded automatically at boot time. Frankly I am surprised that they are not. The module soundcore in particular is supposed to be part of the kernel.

The directory
/lib/modules/3.2.0-23-generic/kernel/sound
should have subdirs with various sound modules in them. Also in that directory should be the module 'soundcore.ko'

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cd /lib/modules/3.2.0-23-generic/kernel/sound
find . -name '*hda*' -print
should return a bunch of output. Loading one or more of those modules, in addition to soundcore if it is not already loaded, is probably necessary.
jepperstone

Re: Mint 14 sound problems

Post by jepperstone »

Thank you for your time! Here are some outputs:

These didn't return anything:

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~ $ lsmod | grep snd
~ $ lsmod | grep soundcore

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~ $ soundcore
soundcore: command not found
No soundcore here:

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~ $ cd /lib/modules/3.2.0-23-generic/kernel/sound
/lib/modules/3.2.0-23-generic/kernel/sound $ find . -name '*hda*' -print
./pci/hda
./pci/hda/snd-hda-intel.ko
./pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-analog.ko
./pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-ca0110.ko
./pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-realtek.ko
./pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-hdmi.ko
./pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-cirrus.ko
./pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-via.ko
./pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-ca0132.ko
./pci/hda/snd-hda-codec.ko
./pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-idt.ko
./pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-si3054.ko
./pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-cmedia.ko
./pci/hda/snd-hda-codec-conexant.ko
How do I install these modules?
tedius

Re: Mint 14 sound problems

Post by tedius »

Every one thanks for your help. The sound has now started to work, and I didn't do anything. Really annoying in a way, as I always like to know what the problem was.

@jepperstone

To load a module you need to use modprobe.

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sudo modprobe snd-hda-intel
This should load the module and any of the others that it needs.

Once you've loaded the module test your sound and see if it works. If it does work you will need to make sure that the module is loaded at boot time, by running

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sudo cp /etc/modules /etc/modules.bak
echo snd-hda-intel | sudo tee -a /etc/modules
Hope this helps.
jepperstone

Re: Mint 14 sound problems

Post by jepperstone »

Beautiful! Thank you all so much!
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