No Sound in Devuan-ascii

ve1drg · 2020-05-02 18:31:26

I have just installed Devuan-ascii and it went very well, but I have no sound at all.

Nothing.. very quiet here. Not good.

The speaker system I have for this installation is very simple. Its just a Logitech arrangement of two small speakers and one larger one that does the base I guess.

It attaches to the computer with just one cable. It can even plug into my cell phone. But just one plug.

And the computer on which I want to use these speakers is a new Dell XPS 8930. All new hardware etc.. so I presume that is where the problem is.
But I have to idea how to find out where the problem is, whether its a driver I need or maybe just new speakers.

The speakers do work though as I have been using them all along on Windows 10, so I am OK there.

I have gone through the settings for sound and found a number of choices but nothing there works for me. Not a peep of sound from anything I picked..

Any thoughts please, would be great..

ralph.ronnquist · 2020-05-02 23:56:41

First, check with aplay -l which "hardware devices" there are (for sound).

Then check with aplay -L | grep -A2 default what the "default" is tied to.

Sometimes that is wrong since "alsa" on installation binds blindly its "default" to card 0. Then it might work by telling "alsa" to use another card, eg card 1. One method for that is to add a ~/.asoundrc file with three lines:

defaults.ctl.card 1
defaults.pcm.card 1
defaults.timer.card 1

If you haven't done so, you might also want to install qasmixer for a bit of visual view and control of sound. It might be a help if it's a question of low volumes or muted controls.

ve1drg · 2020-05-03 15:31:25

Thanks for the reply to my sound problem..

aplay -l gives me this:
-------------------------------------------------
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC3861 Analog [ALC3861 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

aplay -L | grep -A2 default gives me this:
-------------------------------------
default
Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound server
null
--
sysdefault:CARD=PCH
HDA Intel PCH, ALC3861 Analog
Default Audio Device

As to ~/.asoundrc file this is unknown to me. Where does this go.

And I tried to install gas mixer but can't find it anywhere.

I will continue to examine the results of these queries. Maybe there is a way to get sound after all.

What/where is CARD=PCH. Can it be adjusted? Does it need to be installed?

Last edited by ve1drg (2020-05-03 16:07:05)

rolfie · 2020-05-03 19:01:34

ve1drg wrote:

As to ~/.asoundrc file this is unknown to me. Where does this go.

Let me translate: ~/ represents your home directory. A file with a period in front is a hidden file.

ve1drg wrote:

And I tried to install gas mixer but can't find it anywhere.

The package is called Q A S M I X E R. Just use small letters and no blanks.

Good luck, rolfie

ve1drg · 2020-05-03 19:25:34

Rolfie..

Thanks for the input. I feel embarrassed about not understanding the home directory place. Wow. But what the heck, eh?

And on top of that my interpretation of the spelling of Q A S M I X E R was wrong too.

Anyway.. I have those two issues figured out. But no further on getting any sound in my Devuan-ascii installation..

I hope time will get something worked out here..

ralph.ronnquist · 2020-05-04 01:04:08

With pulseaudio there's more fun, because it infuses itself onto the sound system by on the one hand adding a software module to replace the default alsa module at the low level, and it also adds a higher level replacement for the "default" audio path.

Forget about ~/.asoundrc since card 0 is the correct default card.

This means in particular that it adds an audio control level in between alsa and actual output.

So you may well need to install pavucontrol-qt as well, as way of manipulating its controls. That GUI will then attempt to operate the alsa controls as well, with a good amount of potential for confusion.

With those control knobs, and those of qasmixer, you should hopefully be able to unmute whatever is muted and raise the volume on whatever is needed.

As an additional: if your pulseaudio sub system is not started you would start it with:

$ pulseaudio --start

Edit: spelling correction (thanks)

ve1drg · 2020-05-04 17:51:26

Thanks for the update on the audio problem with my Ascii version.

I will give that a try in a bit, and I sure hope that it will work. I love this ascii release. It sure looks and works nice. But without audio I really feel lost.

Thanks again and I will let everyone know how this goes..

larsH · 2020-05-07 12:59:25

Hi

You can also install and enable volumeicon-alsa to control the sound (via alsamixer). Then you don't need pulseaudio at all ;-))

Have a nice day

Lars H

ve1drg · 2020-05-10 22:47:58

Thanks for the reply . ILars.
I installed that alsamixer but it does no good as I dont have any sound.

I am beginning to wonder that no one has sound while running ascii.

I have tried other releases and windows 10 as well, and the sound system I have here runs great. No problem.
Its just this ASCII release that is giving me a hard time.

Thanks anyway guys. Lots of thanks for all that you have offered. But no luck so far.

ralph.ronnquist · 2020-05-10 23:51:53

As per post #3 above, aplay -L | grep -A2 default says that your default output is the PulseAudio sound server, which suggests that you do use pulseaudio, or that you have had pulseaudio and removed it partially. If I remember right, a simple "remove" of pulseaudio only removes the library but not the configuration files, and that those may cause trouble. There are three configuration files to look for and get rid of:

/usr/share/alsa.conf.d/50-pulseaudio.conf
/usr/share/alsa.conf.d/pulse.conf
/usr/share/alsa/pulse-alsa.conf

Once that is done, you may even need an additional alsactl init, so that you get aplay output to be

$ aplay -L | grep -A2 default
-------------------------------------
default
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC3861 Analog
    Default Audio Device
--
sysdefault:CARD=PCH
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC3861 Analog
    Default Audio Device

That is a good place to be at

ve1drg · 2020-05-11 14:17:25

Well time has moved on and I finally got the sound to work in my ASCII setup.. Finally. Lots of work though in reaching that point..

The first thing I did was to remove pulseaudio. I used the remove command plus purge. I got rid of pulseaudio and all its traces..
That was my starting point since I wanted to go with ALSA alone.

Next I ran aplay -L

card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC3861 Analog [ALC3861 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1

Next I made up a file ... /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf, with the following info installed. Which is taken from the aplay listing above:

Alsa.conf:
options snd-hda-intel id=Intel index=0
options snd_hda_codec_nvidia id=NVIDIA index=1

I rebooted and suddenly I had sounds. I guess with only alsa running it. As pulseaudio is now gone.

I also found that 'xterm -e alsamixer' run on a terminal sure gives and nice/easy look at what is happening.

I guess the biggest thing that worked for me was to get the system to see my Nvidia card. It was not really doing that or it wasnt doing that to hear the audio.
This arrangement with ALSA worked. So why consider anything else.

I know that people have said pulseaudio is needed for purer sound? I guess for people with complicated audio systems. But for me I have one speaker. Not very complicated. So it should be fine for me. At least I now have sound. And any kind of sound right now is a great success.

I want to thank all those who tried to help me. And who really did help as it made me look closer, and harder at what I was doing. And now if there is a way to add to what I have that would be great.

I am running ASCII version of Devuan which is really nice. I want to keep it, and the sound now adds to it comfort and easy style..

Thanks everyone..

Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

larsH · 2020-05-11 15:03:26

Hi

As a musician I try to avoid pulseaudio for producing sound (soundtracks, cd etc.)

Actually most distros that is tweaked for producing sound (AV-Linux, Gentoo-Studio) are removing pulseaudio altogether or temporarily disabling it because pulseaudio makes the latencies for sound a lot bigger. This happens because Pulseaudio moves everything to software instead of using the soundcard/chip hardware. That happened because some card chips did (I dont know if this is still the case) might have problems if there are multiple chips/cards. So actually PulseAudio is making the sound the same or a bit worse in most cases.

Have a nice day

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 2020-05-02 18:31:26

No Sound in Devuan-ascii

#2 2020-05-02 23:56:41

Re: No Sound in Devuan-ascii

#3 2020-05-03 15:31:25

Re: No Sound in Devuan-ascii

#4 2020-05-03 19:01:34

Re: No Sound in Devuan-ascii

#5 2020-05-03 19:25:34

Re: No Sound in Devuan-ascii

#6 2020-05-04 01:04:08

Re: No Sound in Devuan-ascii

#7 2020-05-04 17:51:26

Re: No Sound in Devuan-ascii

#8 2020-05-07 12:59:25

Re: No Sound in Devuan-ascii

#9 2020-05-10 22:47:58

Re: No Sound in Devuan-ascii

#10 2020-05-10 23:51:53

Re: No Sound in Devuan-ascii

#11 2020-05-11 14:17:25

Re: No Sound in Devuan-ascii

#12 2020-05-11 15:03:26

Re: No Sound in Devuan-ascii

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