Re: CMI8738 sound card - cannot hear sound in Lenny

On Friday 16 January 2009 00:10, Robert Canner wrote:
Hi folks,

I've installed a CMI8738 PCI sound card (C-Media 8738) on my dual-boot
machine. When I boot Windows, I can hear sound, but when I boot
GNU/Linux, I can't hear any sound.
I have tried 3 different ways of generating sound:
(1) Gnome Desktop|Preferences|Sound|enable System Sounds
(2) Gnome CD Player
(3) $ cat /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav >/dev/dsp
bash: /dev/dsp: Device or resource busy

The motherboard (Intel D865GBF) has an on-board sound system, which I
disabled in the BIOS setup before installing the CMI8738 card.

==
$ uname -a
Linux mercury 2.6.18-6-686 #1 SMP Fri Dec 12 16:48:28 UTC 2008 i686
GNU/Linux
==
$ groups
robert dialout cdrom floppy audio video plugdev netdev powerdev
==

$ lspci -v
...
02:00.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CM8738 (rev
10)
Subsystem: C-Media Electronics Inc CMI8738/C3DX PCI Audio Device
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 209
I/O ports at b800 [size=256]
Capabilities: <access denied>
==
$ cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [CMI8738 ]: CMI8738 - C-Media PCI CMI8738
C-Media PCI CMI8738 (model 37) at 0xb800, irq 209
==
$ cat /proc/interrupts
CPU0
0: 103538 IO-APIC-edge timer
1: 691 IO-APIC-edge i8042
6: 5 IO-APIC-edge floppy
7: 0 IO-APIC-edge parport0
8: 1 IO-APIC-edge rtc
9: 1 IO-APIC-level acpi
12: 29611 IO-APIC-edge i8042
14: 11577 IO-APIC-edge ide0
15: 1192 IO-APIC-edge ide1
169: 27570 IO-APIC-level uhci_hcd:usb1, uhci_hcd:usb4,
i915@pci:0000:00:02.0
177: 0 IO-APIC-level uhci_hcd:usb2
185: 247 IO-APIC-level uhci_hcd:usb3, libata, eth1
193: 23 IO-APIC-level ehci_hcd:usb5
209: 155 IO-APIC-level CMI8738
NMI: 0
LOC: 103501
ERR: 0
MIS: 0
==

Thank you very much,
Robert Canner
London, UK

Hi Robert.

Well the cards being detected according to /proc/asound/cards, and you're a
member of the audio group. The card is supported with the alsa driver 1.0.16,
which comes with Lenny, see below.

Module snd-cmipci
-----------------

Module for C-Media CMI8338/8738/8768/8770 PCI sound cards.

mpu_port - port address of MIDI interface (8338 only):
0x300,0x310,0x320,0x330 = legacy port,
0 = disable (default)
fm_port - port address of OPL-3 FM synthesizer (8x38 only):
0x388 = legacy port,
1 = integrated PCI port (default on 8738),
0 = disable
soft_ac3 - Software-conversion of raw SPDIF packets (model 033 only)
(default = 1)
joystick_port - Joystick port address (0 = disable, 1 = auto-detect)

This module supports autoprobe and multiple cards.

The power-management is supported.

You may just need to open alsamixer in Gnomes terminal, and check the sound
levels, or for any controls that may be muted. the "M" key toggles the
mute/unmute.

Running the command, "speaker-test" , without the quotes, should give you some
pink noise output from your speakers (CTRL +C to quit speaker-test), if all
the levels are ok, and nothing is muted that should be unmuted. The usual
controls that need to be up are, Master, PCM, Front, CD.

I don't use Gnome, but KDE, but it's worth right clicking on Gnomes volume
control (top right), and see if anythings muted. I'm not sure if it's a right
or left click, but there should also be a button for the mixer there as well.

Sorry for the lack of info, but it's getting a bit late here in northern
france, and I'm about to crash out.

All the best.

Nigel.


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