Paul E Condon wrote:
> Today, for the first time in many weeks, my computer, running Jessie,
> started to have sound. It must have something to do with last night
> install of updates of .deb packages. But there are problems.
> I have no software control over the volume. Only way to turn done the
> volume is to turn anti-clockwist the physical knob on the loud speaker
> box. And, the audio mixer, which has been installed during the many weeks,
> has developed a new curious symptom: Instead of doing nothing, it now
> displays a message that GStreamer was unable to find any sound devices.
> Of course there are working sound devices, its just that Jessie sound
> software is not yet working. I'd welcome tips on how to make it fully
> functional faster than just waiting for the full release of Jessie
>
> Note: some of you may remember my asking for help getting my sound to
> work. I got some help. I got help. I spent hours trying different things
> and suddenly it started working, but a few hours later, it stopped working
> again. I don't understand software sound. I think loading and removing
> various packages with various conflicting bugs somehow made it work for
> awhile, and decided to let it lie fallow. I noticed that there are two
> packages on the Xfce4 desktop that I don't believe were there the last
> time I paid attention to computer sound: Ex Falso and Quod Libet. I
> have never felt the need for computer mediated music, so that fact that
> there is broken sound now, rather than no sound might be related to
> these packages.
>
> Anyway, it would be nice to have fully functional sound. My compute is
> a HP Pentium desktop several years old, nothing special, but it is the
> best computer I have ever had, so I expect to be keeping it thru the
> life of Jessie, and beyond.
>
> For now, I can, with adequate guidance, do testing of the new sound for
> today. Is there anything of interest to the developers who are working
> the sound system issues?
>
> The GStreamer message goes on to suggest:
> Some sound system specific GStreamer packages may be missing. It may
> also be a permissions problem.
>
> What is the package set that should be installed in Jessie? Maybe now
> is a good time to find out. Where should I look?
Hi Paul,
Usually you'd first want to check I/O via ALSA devices. The
ALSA project are the people who provide hardware-level
drivers your notebook's sound device. Their part of the
software stack is the most basic and, knowing it gives you
independence to work with most audio software
available for linux.
Gstreamer is a higher-level library that does I/O via ALSA
or pulseaudio.
Pulseaudio is another library that also overlays ALSA.
You may have to deactivate or remove pulse audio to
test basic ALSA I/O, which I will describe:
To learn what your sound devices are, the easiest
way, in a terminal, type:
cat /proc/asound/cards
For example, one entry on on my system is:
0 [MID ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel MID
HDA Intel MID at 0xf2620000 irq 43
The text in the square brackets, you can use to address
the corresponding device.[1]
aplay -D MID test.wav
or
ecasound -i test.wav -o alsa,MID
You can also try
aplay -L
Which will give you the entire list of devices
that ALSA presents.
Now, if the player runs but you don't hear anything,
look at the ALSA-level mixer.
alsamixer -c <devicename>
It's a little fiddly. You use the right/left arrow keys and
TAB key to get to all the various controls. On each control,
type the M key to set the mute/unmute setting, and type
SPACE to set capture on/off. You probably need capture
enabled to be able to record.
Running without desktop audio services and mixer will
help ensure that the changes you make are not reversed
by other software.
Now, once ALSA is confirmed to be working, you can enable
and test higher layers such as pulseaudio and GStreamer.
The Linux Audio Users mailing list is the most authoritative
resource for audio issues.
Cheers,
1. Note that MID is just an identifier, has nothing to do with MIDI, a standard
for
representing digital music.
> Cheers.
> --
> Paul E Condon
> pecon...@mesanetworks.net
>
--
Joel Roth
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