sherington Posted December 19, 2004 Report Share Posted December 19, 2004 Hi, I really like the Mandrake Linux distribution, it always seems to handle all of my hardware really well with one notable exception - the sound card. I always, always, always have problems trying to get my sound card working. So much so, that I'm thinking about replacing it with a new Soundblaster card, but before I do I want to give my existing sound card one last chance. I'd be really grateful if anyone here could look over my problem and offer any advice or suggestions! The Hardware: - I have a MSI Neo2 Platinum motherboard. - It has integrated Intel Audio which I have disabled in the BIOS - Instead of the onoard audio, I use a Hercules Game Theater XP 5.1 PCI card - The card is detected as a Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24. - Athlon 64 3500+ CPU The Software: - Mandrake 10.1 OE (32 bit version), with all latest software updates applied as of 19/12/2004. - KDE 3.2.3 - Windows XP Pro SP2 (dual boot) - The ALSA version is 1.0.6, I did build and install 1.0.7 final from source, but it made no difference. The Symptoms: - If I use the onboard audio, everything seems fine - but I don't want to use the onboard audio. - If I use Windows XP, then everything is fine - but I obviously don't want to use Windows XP. - If I have sound enabled in the KDE control center, I hear nothing. The KDE video player seems to become very unstable and stop responding after a very short while. - If I have sound disabled in the KDE control center, I usually hear nothing. The KDE video player plays flawless video but obviously no sound. - If I have sound disabled in the KDE control center, but I use a non-kde video player (such as mplayer) then there is no sound and the video is very choppy eventually grinding to a halt. - If I have sound disabled in the KDE control center, and use xmms to play mp3s, I hear nothing. - If I have sound enabled in the KDE control center, Amarok looks like it plays the mp3s but I hear nothing. - "mplayer -nosound" plays flawless video, and obviously no sound After digging around these forums for quite a while, and trying a load of different things, I eventually got sound to work (a little) and that gave rise to these symptoms: - Tinny sound quality, and it doesn't play through all of the speakers - Sound playback stutters or gets choppy whenever I minimise a window, close a window, switch desktops, start applications and so on - Still have the problem of the KDE video player becoming very unstable - Still have the choppy/stuttering video playback with mplayer I eventually tried re-installing Mandrake 10.1 again to restore to a base installation - of course it still didn't work. It makes no difference whether I'm my own normal user, or logged in as root. I did see similar problems on earlier versions of Mandrake, but eventually I got 10.0 working reasonably well with very nice quality sound coming from all speakers. In short, even though I could eventually get some sort of sound working, the quality was poor and the video playback and application instability was still a big problem. I've already tried playing with kmix, aumix, alsamixergui and so on - no difference. This all looks to me like a problem with the Cirrus Logic 46xx driver, or an incompatibility between that driver and my card, or it is in fact the wrong driver for my card. Here is some diagnostic information... $uname -a Linux localhost 2.6.8.1-12mdk #1 Fri Oct 1 12:53:41 CEST 2004 i686 AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3500+ unknown GNU/Linux $lspcidrake | fgrep AUDIO snd-cs46xx : Cirrus Logic|CS 4614/22/24 [CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator] [MULTIMEDIA_AUDIO] (vendor:1013 device:6003 subv:1681 subd:0050) $modprobe -l | grep snd-cs46xx /lib/modules/2.6.8.1-12mdk/kernel/sound/pci/cs46xx/snd-cs46xx.ko.gz /lib/modules/2.6.8.1-12mdk/kernel/sound/pci/cs46xx/snd-cs46xx.ko $lsmod | grep snd snd-seq-oss 33248 0 snd-seq-midi-event 6080 1 snd-seq-oss snd-seq 47856 4 snd-seq-oss,snd-seq-midi-event snd-pcm-oss 49832 0 snd-mixer-oss 17536 1 snd-pcm-oss snd-cs46xx 81896 0 snd-rawmidi 19496 1 snd-cs46xx snd-seq-device 7020 3 snd-seq-oss,snd-seq,snd-rawmidi snd-ac97-codec 69392 1 snd-cs46xx snd-pcm 82632 2 snd-pcm-oss,snd-cs46xx snd-timer 20452 2 snd-seq,snd-pcm snd-page-alloc 7464 2 snd-cs46xx,snd-pcm gameport 3328 1 snd-cs46xx snd 46916 10 snd-seq-oss,snd-seq,snd-pcm-oss,snd-mixer-oss,snd-cs46xx,snd-rawmidi,snd-seq-device,snd-ac97-codec,snd-pcm,snd-timer soundcore 7008 2 snd,audio $aumix -q aumix -q vol 90, 90, P pcm 77, 77 line 77, 77, P mic 0, 0, R cd 77, 77, P pcm2 77, 77 igain 80, 80 line1 77, 77, P line2 77, 77 phin 100, 100, P phout 100, 100, P video 100, 100, P $ls -l /dev/sound total 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Dec 19 11:31 adsp -> ../adsp lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Dec 19 11:31 audio -> ../audio lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Dec 19 11:31 dmmidi -> ../dmmidi lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Dec 19 11:31 dsp -> ../dsp lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Dec 19 11:31 midi -> ../midi lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Dec 19 11:31 mixer -> ../mixer lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Dec 19 11:31 sequencer -> ../sequencer lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Dec 19 11:31 sequencer2 -> ../sequencer2 $ls -l /dev/*dsp* /dev/*audio* /dev/*mixer* /dev/*sequencer* /dev/*midi* crw-rw---- 1 mark audio 14, 12 Dec 19 11:31 /dev/adsp crw-rw---- 1 mark audio 14, 4 Dec 19 11:31 /dev/audio crw-rw---- 1 mark audio 14, 9 Dec 19 11:31 /dev/dmmidi crw-rw---- 1 mark audio 14, 3 Dec 19 11:31 /dev/dsp crw-rw---- 1 mark audio 14, 2 Dec 19 11:31 /dev/midi crw-rw---- 1 mark audio 14, 0 Dec 19 11:31 /dev/mixer crw-rw---- 1 mark audio 14, 1 Dec 19 11:31 /dev/sequencer crw-rw---- 1 mark audio 14, 8 Dec 19 11:31 /dev/sequencer2 $lspcidrake amd64-agp : nVidia Corp.| [bRIDGE_HOST] unknown : unknown (10de/00e0/1462/0250) [bRIDGE_ISA] unknown : unknown (10de/00e4/1462/0250) [sERIAL_SMBUS] usb-ohci : unknown (10de/00e7/1462/0250) [sERIAL_USB] usb-ohci : unknown (10de/00e7/1462/0250) [sERIAL_USB] ehci-hcd : unknown (10de/00e8/1462/0250) [sERIAL_USB] forcedeth : nVidia Corp.|Ethernet adapter [bRIDGE_OTHER] unknown : unknown (10de/00e5/1462/0250) [sTORAGE_IDE] sata_nv : nVidia Corp.| [sTORAGE_IDE] unknown : unknown (10de/00e2/ffff/ffff) [bRIDGE_PCI] unknown : unknown (10de/00ed/ffff/ffff) [bRIDGE_PCI] unknown : Advanced Micro Devices|K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration [bRIDGE_HOST] unknown : Advanced Micro Devices|K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map [bRIDGE_HOST] unknown : Advanced Micro Devices|K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller [bRIDGE_HOST] unknown : Advanced Micro Devices|K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control [bRIDGE_HOST] Card:ATI Radeon (fglrx): ATI|Radeon 9800PRO NH (AGP) [DISPLAY_VGA] unknown : ATI|Radeon R300 [Radeon 9800] (Secondary) [DISPLAY_OTHER] rt2500 : RaLink|Ralink RT2500 802.11 Cardbus Reference Card [NETWORK_OTHER] snd-cs46xx : Cirrus Logic|CS 4614/22/24 [CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator] [MULTIMEDIA_AUDIO] ohci1394 : VIA Technologies|OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller [sERIAL_FIREWIRE] r8169 : Realtek|RTL-8169 [NETWORK_ETHERNET] hub : Linux 2.6.8.1-12mdk ehci_hcd|EHCI Host Controller [Hub] hub : Linux 2.6.8.1-12mdk ohci_hcd|OHCI Host Controller [Hub] hub : Linux 2.6.8.1-12mdk ohci_hcd|OHCI Host Controller [Hub] All of my other hardware seems to work just fine, just not the sound card. Thanks in advance for any help! -M. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sherington Posted December 20, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2004 Well, after some more fruitless hours of searching to try and sort this out, I now have sound of a sort, but only by completely ditching ALSA. If I use the cs46xx OSS module, and enable the KDE sound system I can use amaroK to play my mp3's and mplayer now plays my videos with sound OK. It sounds quite good, but there are still significant problems with the sound playback slowing down or stuttering when resizing windows etc. I guess I'll have to live with this for now unless someone can offer any help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sherington Posted December 20, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2004 Actually, I spoke to soon and it's pretty awful. Even if I don't touch my PC the sound playback speeds up, slows down, speeds up, slows down. It's better than nothing, but what a nitemare. I guess I'll have to look around for a better supported sound card, or maybe even try some other Linux distribution because I can't live with this problem! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sherington Posted December 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 23, 2004 SOLVED! Thanks to tiwai at the alsa-project web site I am now very happy with my fully working sound setup. In case this is useful to anybody else, here's what I did... - Disable ACPI in the BIOS With this setting disabled, KDE played sound without any problems, no stuttering and a very nice quality. I didn't check to see if amaroK played mp3s OK, but I guess that it would. However, xmms still didn't play mp3's, so... - Disable the sound system in the KDE Control Center With this setting disabled, xmms played mp3s very nicely with no stuttering during playback. mplayer also plays videos with sound without any of the aforementioned stability or grinding to a halt problems. So that's it. I'm now very happy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sherington Posted December 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 23, 2004 I should add, I am now using ALSA 1.0.8rc1. I don't think that would make any difference, I reckon if I went back to 1.0.7 it would still work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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