Re: ALSA sound recording frustration

On Thursday 27 November 2008 15:38, Mark Neidorff wrote:
Hi All,

In case I have to say it, I'm very frustrated trying to get ALSA sound
working on my Debian ETCH (up to date) box.

My motherboard has built-in sound. Needless to say, I want to hear sound.
I also want to be able to record sound from the stereo headphones jack of
my radio and the stereo audio out from my XM radio.

I've used
arecord -t wav -f CD junk.wav
to try to record. No matter what the settings in the mixers...total
silence (as seen by audacity and as confirmed by using hexdump).

I've searched.
I tried reloading the ALSA drivers.
I ran alsaconf.
I downloaded and installed the kernel source and the ALSA drivers source,
but I was not able to compile the drivers (couldn't find version.h). Yes,
I adjusted for source location with:
./config --with-kernel=/usr/src/linux-source-2.6.18
I've tried alsamixer and alsamixergui.

Here is a bunch of info that I found about my system:

alsamixergui:

Chip Analog Devices AD1986A

+------------------

lspci | grep -i audio

00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev
a2)

+------------------

uname -a

Linux mail 2.6.18-6-k7 #1 SMP Mon Oct 13 16:52:47 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

+----------------

cat /dev/sndstat

Sound Driver:3.8.1a-980706 (ALSA v1.0.12rc1 emulation code)
Kernel: Linux mail 2.6.18-6-k7 #1 SMP Mon Oct 13 16:52:47 UTC 2008 i686
Config options: 0

Installed drivers:
Type 10: ALSA emulation

Card config:
HDA NVidia at 0xfe024000 irq 177

Audio devices:
0: AD198x Analog (DUPLEX)

Synth devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Midi devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Timers:
7: system timer

Mixers:
0: Analog Devices AD1986A

+--------------------

ls -l /dev/dsp

crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 3 2008-11-27 08:48 /dev/dsp

+----------------

Is there anything else you need to know about my system to help me get
sound working?

PLEASE HELP me get sound working.

Thanks,

Mark

Hi Mark.

I've got Etch installed on a machine, with a mobo that uses MCP61, and the
alsa driver version 1.0.12rc1, that comes with the 2.6.18 kernel, and I get
no sounds using that alsa driver.
cat /proc/asound/cards , shows no soundcards, unless I have my usb midi
keyboard plugged in. Then it shows the keyboard as card0. You will probably
find that when running lsmod it shows all snd modules installed, but the card
is not being detected.

Their are 2 options. Upgrade the alsa driver, which is currently 1.0.18a, or
install a later kernel, which has a later alsa driver.

I chose on this machine to install a later kernel, which has alsa driver
1.0.16, and my sound on Etch works ok with this.

If you want go this way, add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb ftp://musix.ourproject.org/pub/musix/deb/ ./

Then run apt-get update, then open synaptic. The kernel you want is as below.

linux-image-2.6.26.2-rt1-libre1

I could never find a GPG key for the musix repo, but if you have problems
installing the kernel with synaptic, you can set the option to ignore the
missing GPG key. I know it's not a good idea to install unsigned packages,
and will have to have another go at finding the key for the musix repo, if
one exists.

Presuming that you now have the 2.6.26 kernel installed now, reboot, and
choose it on Grub's menu, and hopefully on login (I'm using KDE) you now have
some login sounds, and more important, the sound works.

Don't forget to comment out the line for the musix repo after installing the
kernel, by putting a # at the start of the line in /etc/apt/sources.list, as
you don't want possible updates for other packages you have installed on your
Etch, being updated from the Musix repo. Problems can arise when you use repo
pick and mix.

If you still have no sound, post back.

All the best.

Nigel.



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