No sound with HDA ATI SB ACL887-VD

Question

I had this setup working fine in Arch a few days ago. The system froze (ended up being dirty contacts on my PCI wireless card) and after some cleaning and a reboot, I have no sound. The wireless card now works fine; however, even after removing it I still have no sound.
Motherboard: Asus E351-M PRO
Soundcard: ACL887-VD
The card doesn't exist in the HD-Audio-models.txt list, but since it worked before I don't think it's the cause of the issue. The closest options are:
ALC882/883/885/888/889
======================
3stack-dig 3-jack with SPDIF I/O
3stack-6ch-intel Intel DG33* boards
auto auto-config reading BIOS (default)
To load the card, I selected the following options in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf:
options snd-hda-intel model=auto position_fix=3
This is the same setup that a previous Arch user had success with (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 8#p1046038)
Looking at aplay, everything still looks to load fine:
$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Generic [HD-Audio Generic], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC887-VD Analog [ALC887-VD Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: ALC887-VD Digital [ALC887-VD Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
I have set the default soundcard to be my Analog out in /etc/asound.conf (just as in the Arch Alsa Wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ad … figuration )
defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.pcm.device 0
defaults.ctl.card 1
All the modules seem to be loaded correctly and alsamixer works fine and all the controls show up. When I mute/unmute the Master and Front channels I can even hear the small "thud" through the speakers as the channel gets activated.
The only thing that i'm not entirely convinced about is if the default "PCM" output is tied to the front speakers - and not some other channel. I have selected "2 channel" output in the appropriate spot in alsamixer but am unsure how this is handled by alsa. Can anyone confirm if the "speaker-test" command below will force output through the front speakers? The command executes happily (with no warnings or errors) - just NO sound.
speaker-test -Dhw:1,0 -c2
Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated! This whole issue is very annoying - especially since I have no error messages to work with - and is making my HTPC useless!!.
Last edited by klimas (2012-04-24 16:17:10)

Answer 1

OK, some additional information. I installed the HDA-analyzer tool and browsed through all the available codecs and mixers. Aside from the large quantity of information available, two things sparked my interest:
1. There are a bunch of nodes that correspond to each audio output and none of them are muted (all have mute=0). All of these inputs and outputs seem to correspond to alsamixer channels.
Node 0x02 [Audio Output] wcaps 0x41d: Stereo Amp-Out
Device: name="ALC887-VD Analog", type="Audio", device=0
Control: name="Front Playback Volume", index=0, device=0
ControlAmp: chs=3, dir=1, idx=0, ofs=0
Amp-Out caps: ofs=0x40, nsteps=0x40, stepsize=0x03, mute=0
Amp-Out vals: [0x40 0x40]
Converter: stream=8, channel=0
PCM:
rates [0x560]: 44100 48000 96000 192000
bits [0xe]: 16 20 24
formats [0x1]: PCM
Power: setting=D0, actual=D0
Node 0x03 [Audio Output] wcaps 0x41d: Stereo Amp-Out
Control: name="Surround Playback Volume", index=0, device=0
ControlAmp: chs=3, dir=1, idx=0, ofs=0
Amp-Out caps: ofs=0x40, nsteps=0x40, stepsize=0x03, mute=0
Amp-Out vals: [0x40 0x40]
Converter: stream=8, channel=0
PCM:
rates [0x560]: 44100 48000 96000 192000
bits [0xe]: 16 20 24
formats [0x1]: PCM
Power: setting=D0, actual=D0
Node 0x04 [Audio Output] wcaps 0x41d: Stereo Amp-Out
Control: name="Center Playback Volume", index=0, device=0
ControlAmp: chs=1, dir=1, idx=0, ofs=0
Control: name="LFE Playback Volume", index=0, device=0
ControlAmp: chs=2, dir=1, idx=0, ofs=0
Amp-Out caps: ofs=0x40, nsteps=0x40, stepsize=0x03, mute=0
Amp-Out vals: [0x40 0x40]
Converter: stream=8, channel=0
PCM:
rates [0x560]: 44100 48000 96000 192000
bits [0xe]: 16 20 24
formats [0x1]: PCM
Power: setting=D0, actual=D0
Node 0x05 [Audio Output] wcaps 0x41d: Stereo Amp-Out
Control: name="Headphone Playback Volume", index=0, device=0
ControlAmp: chs=3, dir=1, idx=0, ofs=0
Amp-Out caps: ofs=0x40, nsteps=0x40, stepsize=0x03, mute=0
Amp-Out vals: [0x40 0x40]
Converter: stream=8, channel=0
PCM:
rates [0x560]: 44100 48000 96000 192000
bits [0xe]: 16 20 24
formats [0x1]: PCM
Power: setting=D0, actual=D0
Node 0x06 [Audio Output] wcaps 0x611: Stereo Digital
Node 0x07 [Vendor Defined Widget] wcaps 0xf00000: Mono
Node 0x08 [Audio Input] wcaps 0x10051b: Stereo Amp-In
Node 0x09 [Audio Input] wcaps 0x10051b: Stereo Amp-In
Node 0x0a [Audio Input] wcaps 0x100711: Stereo Digital
2. There are a bunch of hardware audio mixers that correspond to specific sets of audio output nodes and all of them are muted (mute=1).
Node 0x0b [Audio Mixer] wcaps 0x20010b: Stereo Amp-In
Control: name="Rear Mic Playback Volume", index=0, device=0
ControlAmp: chs=3, dir=1, idx=0, ofs=0
Control: name="Rear Mic Playback Switch", index=0, device=0
ControlAmp: chs=3, dir=1, idx=0, ofs=0
Control: name="Front Mic Playback Volume", index=0, device=0
ControlAmp: chs=3, dir=1, idx=1, ofs=0
Control: name="Front Mic Playback Switch", index=0, device=0
ControlAmp: chs=3, dir=1, idx=1, ofs=0
Control: name="Line Playback Volume", index=0, device=0
ControlAmp: chs=3, dir=1, idx=2, ofs=0
Control: name="Line Playback Switch", index=0, device=0
ControlAmp: chs=3, dir=1, idx=2, ofs=0
Amp-In caps: ofs=0x17, nsteps=0x1f, stepsize=0x05, mute=1
Amp-In vals: [0x80 0x80] [0x80 0x80] [0x00 0x00] [0x80 0x80] [0x80 0x80] [0x80 0x80] [0x80 0x80] [0x80 0x80] [0x80 0x80] [0x80 0x80]
Connection: 10
0x18 0x19 0x1a 0x1b 0x1c 0x1d 0x14 0x15 0x16 0x17
Node 0x0c [Audio Mixer] wcaps 0x20010b: Stereo Amp-In
Amp-In caps: ofs=0x00, nsteps=0x00, stepsize=0x00, mute=1
Amp-In vals: [0x00 0x00] [0x00 0x00]
Connection: 2
0x02 0x0b
Node 0x0d [Audio Mixer] wcaps 0x20010b: Stereo Amp-In
Amp-In caps: ofs=0x00, nsteps=0x00, stepsize=0x00, mute=1
Amp-In vals: [0x00 0x00] [0x00 0x00]
Connection: 2
0x03 0x0b
node 0x0e [Audio Mixer] wcaps 0x20010b: Stereo Amp-In
Amp-In caps: ofs=0x00, nsteps=0x00, stepsize=0x00, mute=1
Amp-In vals: [0x00 0x00] [0x00 0x00]
Connection: 2
0x04 0x0b
My front channel is node 0x02 and the corresponding audio mixer is 0x0c. The mixer is also connected to node 0x0b, which appears to handle the front/back line-in and mic channels.
Does anyone know if these mixers have an "auto" mute when there is no input?
Alamixer does not seem to have access to these hardware mixers. Is there a way to unmute them manually?