Problems using the sound card on My Thinkpad

[Noah Dain]

On 12/28/05, David <david at kenpro.com.au> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 27, 2005 at 10:36:26PM -0500, Noah Dain wrote:
> > On 12/27/05, David <david at kenpro.com.au> wrote:
> > > On Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 11:27:07PM -0600, David Strauss wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 2005-12-26 at 23:21 -0400, Ryan Thompson wrote:
> > > > > I have been using Ubuntu Linux for all of 3 and a half hours when I
> > > > > posted this.  I am trying to listen to some CD's but the system is
> > > > > telling me that It can't find my sound card.  This makes no sense to me
> > > > > because at the login screen I get the Startup sound.  Can anyone point
> > > > > me in the right direction?
> > > >
> > > > There are different sound systems in Linux, namely OSS, ALSA, ARTS, and
> > > > ESD. GNOME in Ubuntu uses ESD by default. Try running your program with
> > > > ESD (easiest option) or configuring ALSA (better option). There are
> > > > guides to configuring ESD and ALSA together on the forums.
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > which guide do you suggest? I'm having serious trouble with sound and everything
> > > I've tried so far has ended in hisssssss :(
> > >
> > > David
> > >
> >
>
> Unfortunately, I'm not getting any sound at all (other than hiss). The
> output of lspci -v is:
>
> 0000:00:0b.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy LS
>         Subsystem: Creative Labs: Unknown device 100a
>         Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
>         I/O ports at d400 [size=32]
>         Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2
>
> Can you give me a clue where I find the chipset/driver info?
>
> many thanks...
>
> David.
>
>
>
> > If you get the login sound, then you most likely have a sound device
> > that does not do hardware mixing, thus only one process can use the
> > sound device at any given instance.  This is where sound daemons like
> > esd, artsd, jack, and that newer one come in (polyp?)
> >
> > The sound daemon grabs the sound device and then other processes bind
> > to the sound daemon, allowing multiple processes to output sound
> > concurrently.
> >
> > However, not all programs support the various sound daemons, so this
> > "solution" sux.
> >
> > Alternatives:
> > 1) use oss.  Not recommended but oss does mixing in software if need be.
> > 2) use alsa oss emulation.  Better than choice 1, as oss is deprecated
> > in favour of alsa.
> > 3) use alsa mixing libs via a .asoundrc file.
> >
> > I prefer choice 3, with alsa oss emulation available for older apps
> > that don't do alsa yet.  This covers all bases without having to deal
> > with a sound daemon.
> >
> > But what .asoundrc file to use?  We first need to know what chip your
> > sound device is using.  As sound is working, post the output from
> > "lsmod".  You can also post the output from "lspci -v".  Once that is
> > determined, we can play the "rumage around alsa's site trying to find
> > a .asoundrc file that may very well work for you" game.
> >
> > :-D
> >
>

whoops, jah urnot teh original postar lolz omgz mai bad lolz
(and now for something completely different...)

there seems to be quite a bit of hate and discontent surrounding the
audigy series under linux.
lets see if the driver is even registering and grabbing an interrupt: 
'cat /proc/interrupts'
if so, see if the card itself if seen by the system at all: 'cat
/proc/asound/cards'

if that all seems to work, I'd rmmod all the snd* modules, "tail -f
/var/log/messages", and then "modprobe snd-ca0106.ko" and check the
messages output for interesting entries.

--
Noah Dain
"Single failures can occur for a variety of reasons that have nothing
to do with a hardware defect, such as cosmic radiation ..." - IBM
Thinkpad R40 maintenance manual, page 25