[Solved] No sound on X, but it works on the console

Question

I'm not sure what went wrong, so I'll tell the full story: I was struggling to get the Catalyst driver working. I have a Dell 5547, which has two graphics cards, an Intel HD 4400 and a Radeon R7 M260. I had installed the packages catalyst-hook and catalyst-utils-pxp from Vi0l0's repositories, but couldn't start X when I switched to the AMD card. Eventually, I downgraded to Xorg 1.14, also from Vi0l0's repositories, and now I was able to start X with both graphic cards. I'd read on The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill that downgrading to the Linux kernel 3.15.8 solved Daniel.White's problems, so I downloaded the corresponding linux and linux-headers packages from the Arch Rollback Machine. Later, I installed the last Linux kernel (version 3.16.1) and verified that I could still start X with both cards.
Before downgrading to Xorg 1.14, I installed Gnome 3 and everything worked great. I could listen to my music and watch videos on YouTube. Somewhere along the way, however, my sound stopped working. I'm using pulseaudio, and even after changing the settings using pavucontrol, I still can't get the audio to work -- on X. Sound works great on the console, but it refuses to work after I start X.
When I boot my computer and open an audio file with, say, mplayer, it complains that the "Audio device got stuck!"
pavucontrol reports that I have two built-in audio devices. The first one is off, and the second is set to "Analog Stereo Duplex". If I turn it off and then back on, mplayer stops complainning, but no sound comes out. On the "Output Devices" tab, pavucontrol now says that I have a "Dummy Output". It reverts back to normal once I reboot the machine.
Here's some info I think might be useful:
/etc/asound.conf:
# Use PulseAudio by default
pcm.!default {
type pulse
fallback "sysdefault"
hint {
show on
description "Default ALSA Output (currently PulseAudio Sound Server)"
ctl.!default {
type pulse
fallback "sysdefault"
Output of aplay -L:
null
Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
pulse
PulseAudio Sound Server
default
Default ALSA Output (currently PulseAudio Sound Server)
/proc/asound/cards:
0 [HDMI ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel HDMI
HDA Intel HDMI at 0xb0c10000 irq 65
1 [PCH ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH
HDA Intel PCH at 0xb0c14000 irq 62
Please let me know if you need more information. Thanks for reading!
Last edited by revberaldo (2014-08-23 15:03:17)

Answer 1

Hi emeres, thanks for the answer. I edited /etc/modprobe.d/50-alsa-base.conf as you suggested, then rebooted.
$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/50-alsa-base.conf
options snd-hda-intel index=1
options snd-hda-intel index=0
$ aplay -l
aplay: device_list:268: no soundcards found...
$ lspci -nn | grep -i audio
00:03.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT HD Audio Controller [8086:0a0c] (rev 0b)
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 8 Series HD Audio Controller [8086:9c20] (rev 04)
While mplayer is trying to play an MP3 file, I ran:
$ lspci -nn | grep -i audio
00:03.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT HD Audio Controller [8086:0a0c] (rev 0b)
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 8 Series HD Audio Controller [8086:9c20] (rev 04)
I edited 50-alsa-base.conf once again and rebooted the system.
$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/50-alsa-base.conf
options snd-hda-intel index=1,0
$ aplay -l
aplay: device_list:268: no soundcards found...
$ lspci -nn | grep -i audio
00:03.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT HD Audio Controller [8086:0a0c] (rev 0b)
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 8 Series HD Audio Controller [8086:9c20] (rev 04)
I even tried adding this to 50-alsa-base.conf:
options snd-hda-intel index=1 model=auto vid=8086 pid=0a0c
options snd-hda-intel index=0 model=auto vid=8086 pid=9c20
Then rebooted. Nothing changed. I swapped the indexes and that didn't work either.
Then I exited Gnome and ran aplay -l on tty1:
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC3234 Analog [ALC3234 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
pgrep indicated that pulseaudio was indeed running, and I could play an MP3 with mplayer -ao pulse a.mp3. So, pulseaudio is running before X starts. I've checked my ~/.xinitrc and /etc/X11/xinit. Nothing there. That's crazy; what could be running that only affects X? Also, this problem is window-manager independent. It doesn't matter whether I'm running gnome3 or i3, I can't play audio inside X. If I go to tty3, for instance, sound works just fine.