[AuckLUG] Sound problem

[Kent Wilkinson]

Darius Powell wrote:
> Kent Wilkinson <kent_wilkinson at xtra.co.nz> writes:
> 
>> Hi all, I have a problem with my sound, it's not working :-(
>> I was playing around with the sound settings in gxine and have lost all
>> sound period! The reason I was playing around with the sound settings is
>> that I was getting all the background sound from xine but not the
>> voices, but I did get voices in mplayer. It should be noted that gxine
>> worked fine before.
>>
>> My setup is as follows:
>>
>> nForce4 motherboard, with on board ac97 sound which is output via
>> toslink to my home theatre, this has worked great in the past. I have
>> tried changing from the optical connection to the analog front speaker
>> output on the back of the motherboard still no sound, I have tried
>> setting all options with alsamixer, up down on off etc... still no joy.I
>> have tried all of the 3 toslink and several different analog inputs on
>> my home theatre, which still plays fine from dvd via toslink so I don't
>> think it is the home theatre. I still get light from the optical cable
>> from the PC as well.
>>
>> Is my sound card dead ???
>>
>> My OS is Gentoo amd64 kernel version 2.6.20-gentoo-r7 using alsa from
>> the kernel source.
>>
>> Any advice welcome
> 
> See if this helps:
> 
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Dolby_Digital_Out_(AC3,_SPDIF)
> 
> 
> My setup is similar, gentoo amd64 asus mainboard with ac97 using
> optical cable to sound system.
> 
> My ALSA is set to SPDIF by default with (I tried the main system wide
> setting but didn't work, per user setting works):
> 
> dariusp at dilbert:~$ cat ~/.asoundrc
> pcm.!default spdif
> 
> 
> My mplayer config:
> 
> dariusp at dilbert:~$ cat .mplayer/config
> # Write your default config options here!
> 
> ac = hwac3,hwdts,
> 
> 
> My xine config:
> 
> <snip lots of options>
> # speaker arrangement
> # { Mono 1.0  Stereo 2.0  Headphones 2.0  Stereo 2.1  Surround 3.0  Surround 4.0  Surround 4.1  Surround 5.0  Surround 5.1  Surround 6.0  Surround 6.1  Surround 7.1  Pass Through }, default: 1
> audio.output.speaker_arrangement:Pass Through
> <snip lots of options>
> 
> 
> If that doesn't help there are a number of gentoo wiki HOWTOs
> concerning ALSA and surround sound.  However it sounds like yours was
> working previously, so maybe you just lost your config for xine or
> mplayer?
> 
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/Index:HOWTO#Sound
> 

Thanks for the help, still no joy though. I have circumvented the
problem by installing an old sb live card I had lying around. No 5.1
channel though as the card doesn't have toslink and my home theatre only
has toslink for 5.1 channels.

It will do for now, I plan on building a new machine soon anyway, mines
getting a bit antiquated.


Cheers Kent