[solved] Audio: Everything looks fine but I don't hear a sound

Question

Hi board,
I installed my first Arch Linux a little while ago, and I don't manage to get the sound working. Everything looks fine in the debug output to me, Master and PCM are not muted and the volumes are raised in alsamixer, but still I don't get any sound when playing a mp3 file with madplay (though madplay is starting without error and counting the seconds).
Here's the debug output:
# lspci -v|grep -A4 audio
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 18
I/O ports at e000 [size=256]
Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2
00:13.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CM8738 (rev 10)
Subsystem: TERRATEC Electronic GmbH Unknown device 1144
Flags: bus master, stepping, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 20
I/O ports at 8800 [size=256]
Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2
# lsmod|grep '^snd'
snd_cmipci 31104 0
snd_opl3_lib 8704 1 snd_cmipci
snd_hwdep 7300 1 snd_opl3_lib
snd_via82xx 23064 0
snd_via82xx_modem 11528 0
snd_ac97_codec 95780 2 snd_via82xx,snd_via82xx_modem
snd_mpu401_uart 7040 2 snd_cmipci,snd_via82xx
snd_rawmidi 19232 1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_oss 29312 0
snd_seq_midi_event 6528 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 46672 4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 6924 4 snd_opl3_lib,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 38560 0
snd_pcm 69124 5 snd_cmipci,snd_via82xx,snd_via82xx_modem,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 19204 3 snd_opl3_lib,snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 7816 3 snd_via82xx,snd_via82xx_modem,snd_pcm
snd_mixer_oss 14592 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd 44644 15 snd_cmipci,snd_opl3_lib,snd_hwdep,snd_via82xx,snd_via82xx_modem,snd_ac97_codec,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss
# ls -l /dev/snd/
total 0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 0 2007-08-19 12:45 controlC0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 32 2007-08-19 12:45 controlC1
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 36 2007-08-19 12:45 hwC1D0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 24 2007-08-19 12:45 pcmC0D0c
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 16 2007-08-19 12:45 pcmC0D0p
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 25 2007-08-19 12:45 pcmC0D1c
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 17 2007-08-19 12:45 pcmC0D1p
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 56 2007-08-19 12:45 pcmC1D0c
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 48 2007-08-19 12:45 pcmC1D0p
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 49 2007-08-19 12:45 pcmC1D1p
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 58 2007-08-19 12:45 pcmC1D2c
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 50 2007-08-19 12:45 pcmC1D2p
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 1 2007-08-19 12:45 seq
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 33 2007-08-19 12:45 timer
In lspci you can see two audio controllers: The VIA one is the onboard sound chip and the C-Media an additional PCI soundcard I installed because I suspected the onboard sound controller hardware to be broken. But it's not any better with the soundcard...
I also tried to add
options snd-via82xx ac97_quirk=0
to /etc/modprobe.conf according to information in the wiki but it didn't help.
Help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading.
Last edited by schallstrom (2007-08-22 21:27:56)

Answer 1

milan wrote:
Look at this:
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116,  0 2007-08-19 12:45 controlC0
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 116, 32 2007-08-19 12:45 controlC1
This means that kernel modules for both cards were loaded. I'm not using 2 sound cards at this moment, but I'm sure you can switch from one card to another while the system is running. If you are using KDE, you can do it in kmix. So try to switch from one card to another and play with the switches and I'm pretty sure you will make your sound card work.
Cheers!
Thanks for the hint, milan!
I don't have KDE or Gnome installed, so maybe anyone could point me to some documentation on how to switch the sound hardware used on the CLI?