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Sound, no sound - SOLVED


payasam
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My system has Intel 810 AC'97 audio. Works OK (as well as it can, that is) in Windows. I get a noise when I boot into 10.0 Official. But all is silence when I ask, in Thunderbird and Netscape, to be notified of new mail using specific audio files. I've checked the driver and it's the right one.

 

Here's what /sbin/chkconfig --list sound gave: 0, 1, and 6, off; 2 to 5 (inclusive), on. I've no idea what this means: I just typed what I was told to type.

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/sbin/chkconfig --list sound means that sound is working in runlevel 2 3 4 and 5 :)

 

If you hear a sound when you log in KDE? Gnome? it's working (you can play the audio files independent of Thunderbird?). That means it's a problem with the applications.

 

Try changing the audio output. I'm not familiar with both apps so I can't tell you what to change but just have a look under 'setting' or 'advanced' and experiment a bit.

 

Good luck.

 

PS There is one way to change the audio out that works with any application if you use KDE, open a console and type artsdsp <program name>.

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Right, Devries, here goes. I decided, for no particular reason, to switch to GRUB from LILO. When I rebooted, all was silence. This may, of course, have been because I did something in the audio configuration; though I don't think I changed anything. I changed back to LILO and booted in failsafe mode. Audio was back. Went out and booted in normal mode. Once again, no audio. Looking into the audio config I found that the driver had somehow changed from the default for i810 to OSS. I changed it to ALSA, which involved installing something or other from CD. On rebooting, audio was back. It was not back, though, in Thunderbird or Netscape. Since both are based on Mozilla, if your suspicion that their settings are to blame, then the same correction will probably work with both.

 

Audacity reported an error initiating audio i/o layer, Host Error. XMMS and JuK did not work either. I must point out that I don't know if all of these are audio players or something else. Finally I tried Noatun. It played an MP3 track perfectly.

 

One other strange thing. When I specify /mnt with the intention of going into my Windows drives C: or D: to get at the two or three audio files I have on disk, the B: drive begins to spin and keeps spinning, while nothing shows up under /mnt.

 

I'll see now if artsdsp does something and will look into Netscape and Thunderbird; though I've used Netscape for years in Windows and cannot remember any settings to do with audio. I might have missed them, of course.

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Audacity reported an error initiating audio i/o layer, Host Error. XMMS and JuK did not work either. I must point out that I don't know if all of these are audio players or something else. Finally I tried Noatun. It played an MP3 track perfectly.

 

If you use KDE, go to the kde control center, sound and multimedia, soundsystem and hit 'default' and 'apply'. Than try again :)

 

Good luck.

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Roger, Devries. Though I shall feel unhappy if all that rejuvenating exercise over alsa goes waste.

 

Would your location be close to the same downward line as Greenwich?

Edited by payasam
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KDE works with both alsa an oss don't worry. If your system uses alsa, KDE will use it (default sets arts to 'autodetect', meaning it will use the system choise).

 

Short linux sound-description: the base = the sound architecture. Linux has 2: OSS and ALSA. With kernel 2.6 ALSA is the default.

 

layers: Well you need only to know one. If your soundcard/soundchip can't do hardware mixing (that is, 2 or more application can have acces to 'sound' at the same time) you need a software mixer. In KDE this is arts. Arts lets you have sound from a mp3 and a warning that you have new email play at the same time. But you only need it when your card doesn't do hardware mixing.

 

Location GMT +1 (Amsterdam) :D

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Thanks, Devries, though I'll have to read all that around three dozen times before I begin to understand it.

 

Strange about time. The system showed you 5:30 behind me (Delhi) whereas Amsterdam would have been 4:30. I was in your city for some while, by the way, around Christmas of 1975. I am a life-long devotee of edam and gouda, though Amstel doesn't come anywhere near Guinness.

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People in Delhi drink their beer almost frozen. I never could stand that. In England I drank Guinness at Guinness Temperature, which some people also call room temperature. We don't get Guinness here: nor, fortunately, Amstel. Ha ha, gotcha.

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You should be able to hear me, Devries, because my sound works. I am now getting audible notifications of new mail in Thunderbird and in Netscape. I swear I did nothing other than search - without success - for a solution on Google and in a couple of forums other than this one. I also swore at the computer, which may have been what did the trick.

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Adamw: Yes, I have a B: drive - and what's worse, until a couple of months back it was a 1.2MB 5.25" one, which I found far more reliable than the 1.44 kind, whose floppies are almost certain not to be able to carry material from one machine to another. I had to abandon the larger drive because having it maintained had become impossible.

 

Devries: The audio notifications in Thunderbird and Netscape, which had miraculously begun to work, have now miraculously stopped working. I cannot tear my hair, which is too short - but I do have a substantial beard.

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In desperation.

 

As I said, Devries, the audio which had appeared in Thunderbird and Netscape, disappeared. I still had audio on boot up and at shut down and in Alarm Clock, and an MP3 file played perfectly.

 

I suspect the problem is deeper. I was unable to quit Netscape. I could reduce its window size, but then it just sat there. When I disconnected from the Net, its window also just sat there. I had a screen covered with windows and no way to get rid of them except a reboot.

 

There was one red mark on rebooting in failsafe mode: "umount" and "/initrd device is busy" or something similar. Then "INIT: going single user mode, sh-2.05b". An "exit" command got things running again, but the audio was still as I describe above.

 

I am now thinking of wiping out everything and reinstalling from scratch. All told, OS and software packages should not take more than three hours or so: which is no big deal if there is a reasonable likelihood of getting the system working without too many glitches. Those files which I have written in Mandrake can be stored safely in a Windows sub-directory and brought back.

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