No sound on Acer Aspire V5-123-3466 (11.6")

[Le Papillon]

Hello everybody,
I put Linux Mint XFCE 17.2 on an Acer Aspire V5-123-3466. All works perfectly until I tried to read a video or music: it doesn't work (i tried without and with earpieces).
I have also two questions:
* What is the terminal command to know the audio/sound card? -> I was wondering if this netbook had internal speaker and but as there is an earpieces output it must be a sound card...
* Once I found which sound card this PC have, how can I get the driver for it ?
I hoped I will find it (sound card details at least !) on the Acer web site, but I didn't... Does the installation of a proprietary sound card works as a graphic chipset ? I think need to install an other driver for the graphic card of an other laptop, it would help me a lot if I could train myself with a sound card driver

[robert-e]

In a terminal type lspci and that will give you a list, and you will find out which sound hardware, and if there is more than one. Also since Pulse Audio run on top of alsa, you can. also from a terminal type alsamixer and that will
show you the various sound inputs and outputs available. You might find one of the outputs is muted and you can unmute it by using the arrow keys to highlite it, and press the space bar to toggle it. (I believe that some distros shipped
with one of the outputs muted...a common source of problems.)

Regards,
Bob

[Le Papillon]

Thank you Bob.
Is the in-/output unmuted when there is a red "CAPTURE" or "LECTURE" upon it ?

I test the alsa command on my other laptop (Acer Aspire 7745G) because I don't have this Acer Aspire V5 with me at the moment: in the [Lecture] mod, I can only increase or decrease the volume of sound outputs, the space bar does not seem to do anything... Maybe I didn't understand something.
On this other laptop, my internal microphone does not work. Thanks the alsa command, I found in [Capture] an input named "Internal Mic", so maybe "Internal Microphone". When I press the space bar, it activates a red "G D CAPTURE" upon the highlighted input, but it does not change anything.

Regards,
Papillon

[robert-e]

First of all, my apologies..it is the m key that toggles mute/unmute; it has been a long time since I used alsamixer. When there is a double o, as in oo, then it is unmuted or active. A red M means it is muted or inactive. On an acer (my wife has one) there is an "automute" that can be toggled on/off with the up or down arrow key. Hope that helps you.

Best regards,
Bob

PS..you have reminded me that I meant to remove pulseaudio, and experiment with OSS...I keep forgetting. Thanks.
B

[Hoser Rob]

...you have reminded me that I meant to remove pulseaudio, and experiment with OSS...I keep forgetting. ...

Bad idea, and a common one too. Pulseaudio has too many dependencies. See ...

http://voices.canonical.com/david.henni ... our-audio/

... by a canonical dev who actually knows what he's talking about.

[robert-e]

Hi..I read your link..in all that, the only reason (for me) to keep Pulse Audio is that it seems that bluetooth needs it to work. Not sure why that is yet? Other than that, since I don't use Gnome, and never will, those gnome dependencies do not bother me. At least the last time I uninstalled PA, there were alternatives. Now to be fair, LP does seem to use dependencies to advance the use of software that he has written, and writes. So, I will take your view seriously, and use clonezilla first.

Oh yes..my bad, instead of saying OSS, I should have said OSSv4. I used it in other distros and the sound was superb...And my amateur radio programs worked so much better. It has been quite a while since I used OSSv4, and I have hopes that it will have matured since.

Thanks for your input.

Regards
Bob

[Le Papillon]

Thank you for all your answers
Is it possible to experiment OSS without uninstall Pulse Audio ? It is so new for me, if I uninstall something wrong I'm not sure I can repair it
For the Acer Aspire V5-123-3466, I will first try to see what say alsa when I get the laptop back, in two weeks. If it is possible to install OSS next to Pulse Audio it would be fine, at the moment I don't understand very good what is Gnome and what it use to... So if I need it and uninstall Pulse Audio, it's not good Is it possible that I have to install a proprietary driver if OSS does not work too ?

[Le Papillon]

Finally, as I didn't get any answer about installing OSS v4 next to Pulse Audio, I just tryed to install Mint Cinnamon... And the sound works. I didn't had to do anything !
But thank you very much for your answers

[Hoser Rob]

Well, there was no point to installing OSS anyway unless you're a FOSS nut, so nothing lost there.

[Le Papillon]

Can I ask what is a "FOSS nut" ?...

[Hoser Rob]

Can I ask what is a "FOSS nut" ?...

FOSS means free open source software. Some people don't want any closed source proprietary software on their computer. If that's what floats their boat, fine, but it makes it pretty hard to do browsing or play media ...

BTW the command I'd use to show the audio card is

sudo aplay -L