[SOLVED] No sound after update

Question

Hello Arch-Community,
unfortunately my sound (neither Speakers nor Mic) is not working anymore on my machine. Yesterday evening was everything fine, but I guess after todays update something must have happened.
Unfortunately I don't know which kind of information I should provide you in order to describe my problem.
Maybe this as a start:
lspci | grep -i audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
I hope you can assist me in finding a solution?
Thx a lot!
Last edited by Jankosevic (2011-11-15 22:32:14)

Answer 1

ls /dev/snd
by-path  controlC1  hwC1D0  hwC1D2  pcmC0D0c  pcmC0D2c  pcmC1D7p  pcmC1D9p  timer  controlC0  hwC0D0  hwC1D1  hwC1D3  pcmC0D0p  pcmC1D3p  pcmC1D8p  seq
Wow! That shows that you have 2 capture devices (those that end with the letter "c"), and a whopping 5 playback devices (those that end with the letter "p") on your box.
So which one(s) is/are "not working"?
Since you don't mention if you're using gstreamer, PulseAudio, OSS, just plain ALSA, or something else to drive your sound... and the connections (HDMI TV speakers, speakers or stereo plugged into an audio jack, etc.) involved... along with which audio application(s) is/are "not working"... there's plenty of room for a confusion factor to totally cause this to take a quick turn straight into the ditch.
But here's some poor ALSA advice... at least it's free.
First, install the "alsa-utils" package.
Next run the aplay -l command to display all of your playback devices in some crazy English (or your native tongue). Use this to help determine which playback device you want to make the sound come out of.
and/or...
Run the speaker-test -c 2 -l 1 -D plughw:X,Y command one at a time for each playback device... where you replace the "X" with the Card Number (the number following the capital "C" in the ls command above... so in your case, it's "0" and "1")... and replace the "Y" with the Device Number (the number following the capital "D" in that ls command).
For example... to test the "pcmC1D7p" (Card 1, Device 7) playback device enter:
speaker-test -c 2 -l 1 -D plughw:1,7
If you've previously set up the Card Number correctly using the alsamixer command (unmuted the channels, raised the volume, etc.), then you should hear sound during one of those speaker-test runs. You do start the alsamixer command with the "-c" option (or use the F6 key within alsamixer) don't you?
After you've determined which Card and Device you wish to use (most of the time), and if you intend to just use ALSA to drive your sound, then read the ALSA wiki(s) on the Arch and other pages about setting up the ALSA "Default" device in an ALSA configuration file... or configure each of your sound applications with the sound device to use.
When all that's finished, see the arecord man page to fiddle around with your two capture (audio input) devices.
Also, since you have two sound cards, check the wiki(s) about how to set up "options snd slots=" in a /etc/modprobe.d/ configuration file so that the Card Numbers don't swap around on you between system boots.
One last thing; be aware that /etc/modules.conf is/has being/been depreciated in favor of /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf files. See the "modprobe.conf" man page.
Or... you can simply ignore this post.
Last edited by pigiron (2011-11-10 18:53:00)