SuSE & audio: This is ridiculous! (Lengthy rant)
Using AMD-K6, 333 MHz; CS4235 sound card; Samsung SCR-2432 CD-ROM; SuSE 7.2 and 7.3 (and, just in case, Win98). YMMV. To future newbies who may be surprised they can't listen to their CD's under SuSE: How would you like a TV receiver or stereo set where you'd have to turn up the volume control in the cabinet below, then turn the volume control on the front of the set, but then had to turn a third volume control on the back of it? And unless you use all three, you'll get very feeble sound or none at all. Rant begins here. For the several months, two years ago, I had v6.4, I didn't have sound *at all*. It bothered me some, but I was too busy with work and trying to learn a new OS to lose any sleep over that. It couldn't be the equipment, because everything worked well with W98. The lack of sound was the major reason for my buying v7.1 soon after it became available. From my point of view, moving from 6.4 to 7.1 was going from bad to worse. In a couple of months, though financially I could hardly justify it, I moved to 7.2. Great improvement overall, but still no sound. Then, I got 7.3. I tried to get help from SuSE support, but "sound is outside the scope of the technical support." Twice, I posted questions on this list and got some answers, but no solution. To prove that the lack of sound was not equipment related (which I knew well, since it worked with W98), I temporarily installed Mandrake 8.1. Presto! No fuss, no muss, I was listening to CD's. With SuSE 7.3, not even the .wav sounds of the system notifications. In 7.3, in the hardware/sound configuration, there is a button for "Volume", which brings up a screen with two slides (Master and PCM) and controls for the other channels. (In previous versions, I *think* there is a "Test" button, but not in 7.3) I moved "Master" to 100 and went ahead ("PCM" was set to 70 or so; the other channels--Synth, Mono, Mic--didn't relate to me). When in Control Center, I got to Sound, Sound Server, General; pressing the "Test sound" produced no sound. In System Bell there's also a "Test" button, which produced a barely audible tone. System Notifications has lots of .wav files, but all silent. The mixers. Since I was using KDE and had checked the "Start ALSA" in YasT2, I brought up AlsaMixer and KMix (but not at the same time). In both, "Master" was up to 100 ("PCM"--whatever that is--was up to 70). Still, no sound. I paid no mind to the other controls since none was labeled "CD" or something very similar. I did get Gamix and Gmix up, but found them --especially the first--intimidating; besides, none had a control labeled "CD". I was less concerned with the lack of sound from the .wav files than from being unable to play CD's. I found Xmms intimidating; kscd looked more friendly. My first step was to move the volume slide all the way to 100, then tried to operate it. Clicked on the up arrow, opening the player tray, so I could insert a disc. Closed the tray, and shortly the screen showed "Ready." Clicked on the Play/Pause button and the disc began playing. That is, I saw the pilot light blinking, even heard the mechanism turning, and the screen showed the playing progress. Sound? None. Bracing myself, I tried Xmms. Eventually, I learned that though SuSE 7.3 came up with /media/cdrom, Xmms doesn't want that, insists on / cdrom. With that, Xmms listed all the 19 tracks on the CD I had on the tray, and worked well. That is, the hardware worked well; sound, none. I slowly began warming to the idea of buying another sound card, in the belief that this card, though good for W98 and Mandrake, was not good for SuSE. It was then that I had an epiphany (for those who are not familiar with the English language, an epiphany happens when a chandelier falls with a chunk of the ceiling plaster on one's head). While the CD player was churning a disc, I brought up together all four mixers: AlsaMixer (AM), Gamix (Ga), Gmix (Gm) and KMix (KM). It was then that I learned the facts of life my mother didn't teach me: some mixers interact with some others, but not all, not at all times!!! Say that all slides on all mixers are down to 0. Moving AM Master up will raise the Master/Vol of Ga and KM, BUT WILL HAVE NO EFFECT on Gm! However, Gm *does* have effect on all other three! And Ga has effect on AM, but not on Ga and KM, except... Oh, yes! There better be an exception to justify the rule. If you bring up KM, THEN Ga will control KM... I told you, this is ridiculous! But it gets better (that is, more ridiculous). I don't know if all SuSE 7.3 are born alike. On mine, AM channels are labeled Master, Synth, FM, DSP Input, PCM, Mic, Analog L, Mono, Aux, Aux1, Synth DAC. It's easy to extrapolate that Master here is Vol in Gm. Not so easy to correlate when AM has 11 channels to 10 in Gm, where the last three are Digital1, Digital2, Digital3. Why make it simple, when it's so easy to make it confusing? Playing with the slides, I noticed that when I raised KM Line2 to maximum, AM Aux1 and Ga Aux1 went also to top. More importantly, I could hear a faint sound from the speakers! I was sistematically playing with each mixer in turn, testing fully every slide in order. As fate (or Murphy's Law) had it, Ga was the last one of the four mixers, and its last (rightmost) two slides have (to my knowledge) no equivalent on the other mixers. The Input Accumulator (whatever that is) doesn't seem to have any effect on anything, but when I got up the Output Accumulator (whatever that is), the loudspeakers almost jumped from the shelf! Hurrrahh! I was playing audio CD in SuSE! Not only playing audio discs, but now the .wav sounds were booming! I am unable to find in SuSE any informative tract for Gamix (not that I'm about to use Mic any time soon, but I'm curious that of all the channels, it is the only one to have a small button right below the slide, with the letter "V" in it. I'll probably die of old age before I learn what it is, what purpose--if any--it has.) EOR. To sum it up: As root, YaST2, Hardware, Sound, Volume: Master=100; PCM=76; 2nd Aux=100. Next. Finish. As normal user: bring up Kscd. Insert a disc, start it. Do I get sound? Don't be ridiculous! Of course not! Bring Gamix up. Oh, yes, there's no sound because though Master and Aux1 are up (PCM is up, but it has effect only on the .wav sounds, not on discs), Output Accumulator is down. Bring it up. Do I get sound? Of cour not! Bring KMix up. Vol is 100 and PCM is 76, but Line2 is 0. Touch it to raise it, and Gamix Aux1 drops to 0! As I raise KMix Line2, Gamix Aux1 goes up as well. Fine. Finally, I get sound! Warning: If you prize your life, DO NOT touch Gmix! Why? The CD player is working well; the slides in the three mixers (Alsa, Gamix and KMix) are where you want them; you click on the K Menu, Multimedia, Sound, gamix. The gamix window opens WITH ALL the slides down, and instantly, ALL the slides on ALL the mixers go down! Funny, isn't it? -- Regards, gr, in /usually/ sunny, balmy Florida's Suncoast.
Well, just so all the newbies are totally turned off... I've used SuSE since 5.1... and I've never had any issues with sound... I am currently on 8.0, and unless SuSE stops shipping their distro, I'll continue happily along. While they are not perfect, they are far better than most of the distro's out there... of which I have used Mandrake, Redhat, Turbo, Debian, Slackware (and a good number of others that don't even exist any more.) BTW - I am also a Business customer running eMail Server III (which was upgraded from eMail Server II.) - Herman gilson redrick wrote:
Using AMD-K6, 333 MHz; CS4235 sound card; Samsung SCR-2432 CD-ROM; SuSE 7.2 and 7.3 (and, just in case, Win98). YMMV.
To future newbies who may be surprised they can't listen to their CD's under SuSE:
How would you like a TV receiver or stereo set where you'd have to turn up the volume control in the cabinet below, then turn the volume control on the front of the set, but then had to turn a third volume control on the back of it? And unless you use all three, you'll get very feeble sound or none at all.
Rant begins here. For the several months, two years ago, I had v6.4, I didn't have sound *at all*. It bothered me some, but I was too busy with work and trying to learn a new OS to lose any sleep over that. It couldn't be the equipment, because everything worked well with W98. The lack of sound was the major reason for my buying v7.1 soon after it became available. From my point of view, moving from 6.4 to 7.1 was going from bad to worse. In a couple of months, though financially I could hardly justify it, I moved to 7.2. Great improvement overall, but still no sound. Then, I got 7.3. I tried to get help from SuSE support, but "sound is outside the scope of the technical support." Twice, I posted questions on this list and got some answers, but no solution. To prove that the lack of sound was not equipment related (which I knew well, since it worked with W98), I temporarily installed Mandrake 8.1. Presto! No fuss, no muss, I was listening to CD's. With SuSE 7.3, not even the .wav sounds of the system notifications. In 7.3, in the hardware/sound configuration, there is a button for "Volume", which brings up a screen with two slides (Master and PCM) and controls for the other channels. (In previous versions, I *think* there is a "Test" button, but not in 7.3) I moved "Master" to 100 and went ahead ("PCM" was set to 70 or so; the other channels--Synth, Mono, Mic--didn't relate to me). When in Control Center, I got to Sound, Sound Server, General; pressing the "Test sound" produced no sound. In System Bell there's also a "Test" button, which produced a barely audible tone. System Notifications has lots of .wav files, but all silent. The mixers. Since I was using KDE and had checked the "Start ALSA" in YasT2, I brought up AlsaMixer and KMix (but not at the same time). In both, "Master" was up to 100 ("PCM"--whatever that is--was up to 70). Still, no sound. I paid no mind to the other controls since none was labeled "CD" or something very similar. I did get Gamix and Gmix up, but found them --especially the first--intimidating; besides, none had a control labeled "CD". I was less concerned with the lack of sound from the .wav files than from being unable to play CD's. I found Xmms intimidating; kscd looked more friendly. My first step was to move the volume slide all the way to 100, then tried to operate it. Clicked on the up arrow, opening the player tray, so I could insert a disc. Closed the tray, and shortly the screen showed "Ready." Clicked on the Play/Pause button and the disc began playing. That is, I saw the pilot light blinking, even heard the mechanism turning, and the screen showed the playing progress. Sound? None. Bracing myself, I tried Xmms. Eventually, I learned that though SuSE 7.3 came up with /media/cdrom, Xmms doesn't want that, insists on / cdrom. With that, Xmms listed all the 19 tracks on the CD I had on the tray, and worked well. That is, the hardware worked well; sound, none. I slowly began warming to the idea of buying another sound card, in the belief that this card, though good for W98 and Mandrake, was not good for SuSE. It was then that I had an epiphany (for those who are not familiar with the English language, an epiphany happens when a chandelier falls with a chunk of the ceiling plaster on one's head). While the CD player was churning a disc, I brought up together all four mixers: AlsaMixer (AM), Gamix (Ga), Gmix (Gm) and KMix (KM). It was then that I learned the facts of life my mother didn't teach me: some mixers interact with some others, but not all, not at all times!!! Say that all slides on all mixers are down to 0. Moving AM Master up will raise the Master/Vol of Ga and KM, BUT WILL HAVE NO EFFECT on Gm! However, Gm *does* have effect on all other three! And Ga has effect on AM, but not on Ga and KM, except... Oh, yes! There better be an exception to justify the rule. If you bring up KM, THEN Ga will control KM... I told you, this is ridiculous! But it gets better (that is, more ridiculous). I don't know if all SuSE 7.3 are born alike. On mine, AM channels are labeled Master, Synth, FM, DSP Input, PCM, Mic, Analog L, Mono, Aux, Aux1, Synth DAC. It's easy to extrapolate that Master here is Vol in Gm. Not so easy to correlate when AM has 11 channels to 10 in Gm, where the last three are Digital1, Digital2, Digital3. Why make it simple, when it's so easy to make it confusing? Playing with the slides, I noticed that when I raised KM Line2 to maximum, AM Aux1 and Ga Aux1 went also to top. More importantly, I could hear a faint sound from the speakers! I was sistematically playing with each mixer in turn, testing fully every slide in order. As fate (or Murphy's Law) had it, Ga was the last one of the four mixers, and its last (rightmost) two slides have (to my knowledge) no equivalent on the other mixers. The Input Accumulator (whatever that is) doesn't seem to have any effect on anything, but when I got up the Output Accumulator (whatever that is), the loudspeakers almost jumped from the shelf! Hurrrahh! I was playing audio CD in SuSE! Not only playing audio discs, but now the .wav sounds were booming! I am unable to find in SuSE any informative tract for Gamix (not that I'm about to use Mic any time soon, but I'm curious that of all the channels, it is the only one to have a small button right below the slide, with the letter "V" in it. I'll probably die of old age before I learn what it is, what purpose--if any--it has.)
EOR.
To sum it up: As root, YaST2, Hardware, Sound, Volume: Master=100; PCM=76; 2nd Aux=100. Next. Finish. As normal user: bring up Kscd. Insert a disc, start it. Do I get sound? Don't be ridiculous! Of course not! Bring Gamix up. Oh, yes, there's no sound because though Master and Aux1 are up (PCM is up, but it has effect only on the .wav sounds, not on discs), Output Accumulator is down. Bring it up. Do I get sound? Of cour not! Bring KMix up. Vol is 100 and PCM is 76, but Line2 is 0. Touch it to raise it, and Gamix Aux1 drops to 0! As I raise KMix Line2, Gamix Aux1 goes up as well. Fine. Finally, I get sound! Warning: If you prize your life, DO NOT touch Gmix! Why? The CD player is working well; the slides in the three mixers (Alsa, Gamix and KMix) are where you want them; you click on the K Menu, Multimedia, Sound, gamix. The gamix window opens WITH ALL the slides down, and instantly, ALL the slides on ALL the mixers go down! Funny, isn't it?
For all its problems, SuSE Gnu Linux far surpasses in usefullness, power, and scope any other distribution. I will always be a SuSE user and it has definetly improved the quality of my life. On Saturday 18 May 2002 06:55 pm, Herman Knief wrote:
Well, just so all the newbies are totally turned off... I've used SuSE since 5.1... and I've never had any issues with sound... I am currently on 8.0, and unless SuSE stops shipping their distro, I'll continue happily along. While they are not perfect, they are far better than most of the distro's out there... of which I have used Mandrake, Redhat, Turbo, Debian, Slackware (and a good number of others that don't even exist any more.)
BTW - I am also a Business customer running eMail Server III (which was upgraded from eMail Server II.)
- Herman
gilson redrick wrote:
Using AMD-K6, 333 MHz; CS4235 sound card; Samsung SCR-2432 CD-ROM; SuSE 7.2 and 7.3 (and, just in case, Win98). YMMV.
To future newbies who may be surprised they can't listen to their CD's under SuSE:
How would you like a TV receiver or stereo set where you'd have to turn up the volume control in the cabinet below, then turn the volume control on the front of the set, but then had to turn a third volume control on the back of it? And unless you use all three, you'll get very feeble sound or none at all.
Rant begins here. For the several months, two years ago, I had v6.4, I didn't have sound *at all*. It bothered me some, but I was too busy with work and trying to learn a new OS to lose any sleep over that. It couldn't be the equipment, because everything worked well with W98. The lack of sound was the major reason for my buying v7.1 soon after it became available. From my point of view, moving from 6.4 to 7.1 was going from bad to worse. In a couple of months, though financially I could hardly justify it, I moved to 7.2. Great improvement overall, but still no sound. Then, I got 7.3. I tried to get help from SuSE support, but "sound is outside the scope of the technical support." Twice, I posted questions on this list and got some answers, but no solution. To prove that the lack of sound was not equipment related (which I knew well, since it worked with W98), I temporarily installed Mandrake 8.1. Presto! No fuss, no muss, I was listening to CD's. With SuSE 7.3, not even the .wav sounds of the system notifications. In 7.3, in the hardware/sound configuration, there is a button for "Volume", which brings up a screen with two slides (Master and PCM) and controls for the other channels. (In previous versions, I *think* there is a "Test" button, but not in 7.3) I moved "Master" to 100 and went ahead ("PCM" was set to 70 or so; the other channels--Synth, Mono, Mic--didn't relate to me). When in Control Center, I got to Sound, Sound Server, General; pressing the "Test sound" produced no sound. In System Bell there's also a "Test" button, which produced a barely audible tone. System Notifications has lots of .wav files, but all silent. The mixers. Since I was using KDE and had checked the "Start ALSA" in YasT2, I brought up AlsaMixer and KMix (but not at the same time). In both, "Master" was up to 100 ("PCM"--whatever that is--was up to 70). Still, no sound. I paid no mind to the other controls since none was labeled "CD" or something very similar. I did get Gamix and Gmix up, but found them --especially the first--intimidating; besides, none had a control labeled "CD". I was less concerned with the lack of sound from the .wav files than from being unable to play CD's. I found Xmms intimidating; kscd looked more friendly. My first step was to move the volume slide all the way to 100, then tried to operate it. Clicked on the up arrow, opening the player tray, so I could insert a disc. Closed the tray, and shortly the screen showed "Ready." Clicked on the Play/Pause button and the disc began playing. That is, I saw the pilot light blinking, even heard the mechanism turning, and the screen showed the playing progress. Sound? None. Bracing myself, I tried Xmms. Eventually, I learned that though SuSE 7.3 came up with /media/cdrom, Xmms doesn't want that, insists on / cdrom. With that, Xmms listed all the 19 tracks on the CD I had on the tray, and worked well. That is, the hardware worked well; sound, none. I slowly began warming to the idea of buying another sound card, in the belief that this card, though good for W98 and Mandrake, was not good for SuSE. It was then that I had an epiphany (for those who are not familiar with the English language, an epiphany happens when a chandelier falls with a chunk of the ceiling plaster on one's head). While the CD player was churning a disc, I brought up together all four mixers: AlsaMixer (AM), Gamix (Ga), Gmix (Gm) and KMix (KM). It was then that I learned the facts of life my mother didn't teach me: some mixers interact with some others, but not all, not at all times!!! Say that all slides on all mixers are down to 0. Moving AM Master up will raise the Master/Vol of Ga and KM, BUT WILL HAVE NO EFFECT on Gm! However, Gm *does* have effect on all other three! And Ga has effect on AM, but not on Ga and KM, except... Oh, yes! There better be an exception to justify the rule. If you bring up KM, THEN Ga will control KM... I told you, this is ridiculous! But it gets better (that is, more ridiculous). I don't know if all SuSE 7.3 are born alike. On mine, AM channels are labeled Master, Synth, FM, DSP Input, PCM, Mic, Analog L, Mono, Aux, Aux1, Synth DAC. It's easy to extrapolate that Master here is Vol in Gm. Not so easy to correlate when AM has 11 channels to 10 in Gm, where the last three are Digital1, Digital2, Digital3. Why make it simple, when it's so easy to make it confusing? Playing with the slides, I noticed that when I raised KM Line2 to maximum, AM Aux1 and Ga Aux1 went also to top. More importantly, I could hear a faint sound from the speakers! I was sistematically playing with each mixer in turn, testing fully every slide in order. As fate (or Murphy's Law) had it, Ga was the last one of the four mixers, and its last (rightmost) two slides have (to my knowledge) no equivalent on the other mixers. The Input Accumulator (whatever that is) doesn't seem to have any effect on anything, but when I got up the Output Accumulator (whatever that is), the loudspeakers almost jumped from the shelf! Hurrrahh! I was playing audio CD in SuSE! Not only playing audio discs, but now the .wav sounds were booming! I am unable to find in SuSE any informative tract for Gamix (not that I'm about to use Mic any time soon, but I'm curious that of all the channels, it is the only one to have a small button right below the slide, with the letter "V" in it. I'll probably die of old age before I learn what it is, what purpose--if any--it has.)
EOR.
To sum it up: As root, YaST2, Hardware, Sound, Volume: Master=100; PCM=76; 2nd Aux=100. Next. Finish. As normal user: bring up Kscd. Insert a disc, start it. Do I get sound? Don't be ridiculous! Of course not! Bring Gamix up. Oh, yes, there's no sound because though Master and Aux1 are up (PCM is up, but it has effect only on the .wav sounds, not on discs), Output Accumulator is down. Bring it up. Do I get sound? Of cour not! Bring KMix up. Vol is 100 and PCM is 76, but Line2 is 0. Touch it to raise it, and Gamix Aux1 drops to 0! As I raise KMix Line2, Gamix Aux1 goes up as well. Fine. Finally, I get sound! Warning: If you prize your life, DO NOT touch Gmix! Why? The CD player is working well; the slides in the three mixers (Alsa, Gamix and KMix) are where you want them; you click on the K Menu, Multimedia, Sound, gamix. The gamix window opens WITH ALL the slides down, and instantly, ALL the slides on ALL the mixers go down! Funny, isn't it?
On Saturday 18 May 2002 18:44, gilson redrick wrote:
Using AMD-K6, 333 MHz; CS4235 sound card; Samsung SCR-2432 CD-ROM; SuSE 7.2 and 7.3 (and, just in case, Win98). YMMV.
To future newbies who may be surprised they can't listen to their CD's under SuSE:
How would you like a TV receiver or stereo set where you'd have to turn up the volume control in the cabinet below, then turn the volume control on the front of the set, but then had to turn a third volume control on the back of it? And unless you use all three, you'll get very feeble sound or none at all.
Rant begins here. For the several months, two years ago, I had v6.4, I didn't have sound *at all*. It bothered me some, but I was too busy with work and trying to learn a new OS to lose any sleep over that. It couldn't be the equipment, because everything worked well with W98. The lack of sound was the major reason for my buying v7.1 soon after it became available. From my point of view, moving from 6.4 to 7.1 was going from bad to worse. In a couple of months, though financially I could hardly justify it, I moved to 7.2. Great improvement overall, but still no sound. Then, I got 7.3. I tried to get help from SuSE support, but "sound is outside the scope of the technical support." Twice, I posted questions on this list and got some answers, but no solution. To prove that the lack of sound was not equipment related (which I knew well, since it worked with W98), I temporarily installed Mandrake 8.1. Presto! No fuss, no muss, I was listening to CD's. With SuSE 7.3, not even the .wav sounds of the system notifications. In 7.3, in the hardware/sound configuration, there is a button for "Volume", which brings up a screen with two slides (Master and PCM) and controls for the other channels. (In previous versions, I *think* there is a "Test" button, but not in 7.3) I moved "Master" to 100 and went ahead ("PCM" was set to 70 or so; the other channels--Synth, Mono, Mic--didn't relate to me). When in Control Center, I got to Sound, Sound Server, General; pressing the "Test sound" produced no sound. In System Bell there's also a "Test" button, which produced a barely audible tone. System Notifications has lots of .wav files, but all silent. The mixers. Since I was using KDE and had checked the "Start ALSA" in YasT2, I brought up AlsaMixer and KMix (but not at the same time). In both, "Master" was up to 100 ("PCM"--whatever that is--was up to 70). Still, no sound. I paid no mind to the other controls since none was labeled "CD" or something very similar. I did get Gamix and Gmix up, but found them --especially the first--intimidating; besides, none had a control labeled "CD". I was less concerned with the lack of sound from the .wav files than from being unable to play CD's. I found Xmms intimidating; kscd looked more friendly. My first step was to move the volume slide all the way to 100, then tried to operate it. Clicked on the up arrow, opening the player tray, so I could insert a disc. Closed the tray, and shortly the screen showed "Ready." Clicked on the Play/Pause button and the disc began playing. That is, I saw the pilot light blinking, even heard the mechanism turning, and the screen showed the playing progress. Sound? None. Bracing myself, I tried Xmms. Eventually, I learned that though SuSE 7.3 came up with /media/cdrom, Xmms doesn't want that, insists on / cdrom. With that, Xmms listed all the 19 tracks on the CD I had on the tray, and worked well. That is, the hardware worked well; sound, none. I slowly began warming to the idea of buying another sound card, in the belief that this card, though good for W98 and Mandrake, was not good for SuSE. It was then that I had an epiphany (for those who are not familiar with the English language, an epiphany happens when a chandelier falls with a chunk of the ceiling plaster on one's head). While the CD player was churning a disc, I brought up together all four mixers: AlsaMixer (AM), Gamix (Ga), Gmix (Gm) and KMix (KM). It was then that I learned the facts of life my mother didn't teach me: some mixers interact with some others, but not all, not at all times!!! Say that all slides on all mixers are down to 0. Moving AM Master up will raise the Master/Vol of Ga and KM, BUT WILL HAVE NO EFFECT on Gm! However, Gm *does* have effect on all other three! And Ga has effect on AM, but not on Ga and KM, except... Oh, yes! There better be an exception to justify the rule. If you bring up KM, THEN Ga will control KM... I told you, this is ridiculous! But it gets better (that is, more ridiculous). I don't know if all SuSE 7.3 are born alike. On mine, AM channels are labeled Master, Synth, FM, DSP Input, PCM, Mic, Analog L, Mono, Aux, Aux1, Synth DAC. It's easy to extrapolate that Master here is Vol in Gm. Not so easy to correlate when AM has 11 channels to 10 in Gm, where the last three are Digital1, Digital2, Digital3. Why make it simple, when it's so easy to make it confusing? Playing with the slides, I noticed that when I raised KM Line2 to maximum, AM Aux1 and Ga Aux1 went also to top. More importantly, I could hear a faint sound from the speakers! I was sistematically playing with each mixer in turn, testing fully every slide in order. As fate (or Murphy's Law) had it, Ga was the last one of the four mixers, and its last (rightmost) two slides have (to my knowledge) no equivalent on the other mixers. The Input Accumulator (whatever that is) doesn't seem to have any effect on anything, but when I got up the Output Accumulator (whatever that is), the loudspeakers almost jumped from the shelf! Hurrrahh! I was playing audio CD in SuSE! Not only playing audio discs, but now the .wav sounds were booming! I am unable to find in SuSE any informative tract for Gamix (not that I'm about to use Mic any time soon, but I'm curious that of all the channels, it is the only one to have a small button right below the slide, with the letter "V" in it. I'll probably die of old age before I learn what it is, what purpose--if any--it has.)
EOR.
To sum it up: As root, YaST2, Hardware, Sound, Volume: Master=100; PCM=76; 2nd Aux=100. Next. Finish. As normal user: bring up Kscd. Insert a disc, start it. Do I get sound? Don't be ridiculous! Of course not! Bring Gamix up. Oh, yes, there's no sound because though Master and Aux1 are up (PCM is up, but it has effect only on the .wav sounds, not on discs), Output Accumulator is down. Bring it up. Do I get sound? Of cour not! Bring KMix up. Vol is 100 and PCM is 76, but Line2 is 0. Touch it to raise it, and Gamix Aux1 drops to 0! As I raise KMix Line2, Gamix Aux1 goes up as well. Fine. Finally, I get sound! Warning: If you prize your life, DO NOT touch Gmix! Why? The CD player is working well; the slides in the three mixers (Alsa, Gamix and KMix) are where you want them; you click on the K Menu, Multimedia, Sound, gamix. The gamix window opens WITH ALL the slides down, and instantly, ALL the slides on ALL the mixers go down! Funny, isn't it?
Wow, that is quite the rant! Perhaps we could give you a hand, though. First of all, are you still using the Epiphany sound card? If so, have you gone to the SuSE hardware database to see if it is supported? If it is not, that could well be your problem. Personally, I favor sound cards that use a Yamaha chipset. Currently I am using a Guillemot card, and I must say that the sound is awesome! Also, do you have ALSA installed? Have you tried the OSS drivers instead of aRTs? Do you have splay installed? See if you can give us some more information, as I am sure that there is a solution. Kevin
On Sat, 18 May 2002, gilson redrick wrote:
I am unable to find in SuSE any informative tract for Gamix (not that I'm about to use Mic any time soon, but I'm curious that of all the channels, it is the only one to have a small button right below the slide, with the letter "V" in it. I'll probably die of old age before I learn what it is, what purpose--if any--it has.)
Hi, first of all (you are now running SuSE 7.3?) be sure that you installed all alsa(*)packages ... than run alsaconf to be sure your soundcard is recognized ... if so run alsamixer (like you did) and make sure that not only the volume is rized for you cd but also that it is unmuted (no M at the end of the scale) ... if this works enable alsa at startup with Yast2 (rcconfig) ... to play cd's I use tcd (install the same named package) Hope you have luck Oliver -- ... don't touch the bang-bang fruit ...
From: Max Webb hbwebb@citlink.net RE: SuSE & audio: This is ridiculous! Uh.... ok first I must say after reading your post I feel very dizzy. I have not had your poor experience with sound in SuSE Gnu Linux. I have been a SuSE Gnu Linux user since 7.1 and did discover, after a long period of Investigation into why I had no sound emediately after installing SuSE, that even though I had properly configured my Sound Blaster during installation, I had to turn up the volumes in Kmix (I use KDE)!!! This, it may be noted enabled sound in all cases with the exception of one noted below. I tested my sound with my CDRW and DVD-ROM and Kscd, played a game or two and messed around with SpiralSynth. The only thing that didn't work was system event driven sounds. So logic dictated the KDE control center and sound (at the time I didn't know about Yast2/Hardware/sound). Strangely sound server and system sounds were enabled. On a hunch I decided to uncheck the support and then apply and then recheck it and then apply it again guess what? A pop up told me that the system would need to restart ALSA sound server! Makes sense! Guess what! System notifications now work. OK this is my take on it. Why fiddle about with a redundant set of mixers? You said you were using KDE. Then why even bother with Gmix? Gmix for god sake in KDE! ..... gamix? Just listen to that name and thats enough right there to tell you its AC/DC! I agree with you that SuSE Gnu Linux has post configuration sound problems. I just think them not as severe as do you. You are correct that sound works right away in Mandrake, RedHat, windoze etc, without the need to adjust mixers. Its ridiculous. Surely the brain trust at SuSE can, modify Yast to by default and without any user intervention, set all volumes in yast sound to about 65 percent, make a yast volume applet, and make sure that sound events work right out of the box. Its not as complex as you think it is, but it is more complex than it should be. Use only one mixer Gmix! Place Gmix in your KDE tray. The End. On Saturday 18 May 2002 06:44 PM, gilson redrick wrote:
Using AMD-K6, 333 MHz; CS4235 sound card; Samsung SCR-2432 CD-ROM; SuSE 7.2 and 7.3 (and, just in case, Win98). YMMV.
To future newbies who may be surprised they can't listen to their CD's under SuSE:
How would you like a TV receiver or stereo set where you'd have to turn up the volume control in the cabinet below, then turn the volume control on the front of the set, but then had to turn a third volume control on the back of it? And unless you use all three, you'll get very feeble sound or none at all.
Rant begins here. For the several months, two years ago, I had v6.4, I didn't have sound *at all*. It bothered me some, but I was too busy with work and trying to learn a new OS to lose any sleep over that. It couldn't be the equipment, because everything worked well with W98. The lack of sound was the major reason for my buying v7.1 soon after it became available. From my point of view, moving from 6.4 to 7.1 was going from bad to worse. In a couple of months, though financially I could hardly justify it, I moved to 7.2. Great improvement overall, but still no sound. Then, I got 7.3. I tried to get help from SuSE support, but "sound is outside the scope of the technical support." Twice, I posted questions on this list and got some answers, but no solution. To prove that the lack of sound was not equipment related (which I knew well, since it worked with W98), I temporarily installed Mandrake 8.1. Presto! No fuss, no muss, I was listening to CD's. With SuSE 7.3, not even the .wav sounds of the system notifications. In 7.3, in the hardware/sound configuration, there is a button for "Volume", which brings up a screen with two slides (Master and PCM) and controls for the other channels. (In previous versions, I *think* there is a "Test" button, but not in 7.3) I moved "Master" to 100 and went ahead ("PCM" was set to 70 or so; the other channels--Synth, Mono, Mic--didn't relate to me). When in Control Center, I got to Sound, Sound Server, General; pressing the "Test sound" produced no sound. In System Bell there's also a "Test" button, which produced a barely audible tone. System Notifications has lots of .wav files, but all silent. The mixers. Since I was using KDE and had checked the "Start ALSA" in YasT2, I brought up AlsaMixer and KMix (but not at the same time). In both, "Master" was up to 100 ("PCM"--whatever that is--was up to 70). Still, no sound. I paid no mind to the other controls since none was labeled "CD" or something very similar. I did get Gamix and Gmix up, but found them --especially the first--intimidating; besides, none had a control labeled "CD". I was less concerned with the lack of sound from the .wav files than from being unable to play CD's. I found Xmms intimidating; kscd looked more friendly. My first step was to move the volume slide all the way to 100, then tried to operate it. Clicked on the up arrow, opening the player tray, so I could insert a disc. Closed the tray, and shortly the screen showed "Ready." Clicked on the Play/Pause button and the disc began playing. That is, I saw the pilot light blinking, even heard the mechanism turning, and the screen showed the playing progress. Sound? None. Bracing myself, I tried Xmms. Eventually, I learned that though SuSE 7.3 came up with /media/cdrom, Xmms doesn't want that, insists on / cdrom. With that, Xmms listed all the 19 tracks on the CD I had on the tray, and worked well. That is, the hardware worked well; sound, none. I slowly began warming to the idea of buying another sound card, in the belief that this card, though good for W98 and Mandrake, was not good for SuSE. It was then that I had an epiphany (for those who are not familiar with the English language, an epiphany happens when a chandelier falls with a chunk of the ceiling plaster on one's head). While the CD player was churning a disc, I brought up together all four mixers: AlsaMixer (AM), Gamix (Ga), Gmix (Gm) and KMix (KM). It was then that I learned the facts of life my mother didn't teach me: some mixers interact with some others, but not all, not at all times!!! Say that all slides on all mixers are down to 0. Moving AM Master up will raise the Master/Vol of Ga and KM, BUT WILL HAVE NO EFFECT on Gm! However, Gm *does* have effect on all other three! And Ga has effect on AM, but not on Ga and KM, except... Oh, yes! There better be an exception to justify the rule. If you bring up KM, THEN Ga will control KM... I told you, this is ridiculous! But it gets better (that is, more ridiculous). I don't know if all SuSE 7.3 are born alike. On mine, AM channels are labeled Master, Synth, FM, DSP Input, PCM, Mic, Analog L, Mono, Aux, Aux1, Synth DAC. It's easy to extrapolate that Master here is Vol in Gm. Not so easy to correlate when AM has 11 channels to 10 in Gm, where the last three are Digital1, Digital2, Digital3. Why make it simple, when it's so easy to make it confusing? Playing with the slides, I noticed that when I raised KM Line2 to maximum, AM Aux1 and Ga Aux1 went also to top. More importantly, I could hear a faint sound from the speakers! I was sistematically playing with each mixer in turn, testing fully every slide in order. As fate (or Murphy's Law) had it, Ga was the last one of the four mixers, and its last (rightmost) two slides have (to my knowledge) no equivalent on the other mixers. The Input Accumulator (whatever that is) doesn't seem to have any effect on anything, but when I got up the Output Accumulator (whatever that is), the loudspeakers almost jumped from the shelf! Hurrrahh! I was playing audio CD in SuSE! Not only playing audio discs, but now the .wav sounds were booming! I am unable to find in SuSE any informative tract for Gamix (not that I'm about to use Mic any time soon, but I'm curious that of all the channels, it is the only one to have a small button right below the slide, with the letter "V" in it. I'll probably die of old age before I learn what it is, what purpose--if any--it has.)
EOR.
To sum it up: As root, YaST2, Hardware, Sound, Volume: Master=100; PCM=76; 2nd Aux=100. Next. Finish. As normal user: bring up Kscd. Insert a disc, start it. Do I get sound? Don't be ridiculous! Of course not! Bring Gamix up. Oh, yes, there's no sound because though Master and Aux1 are up (PCM is up, but it has effect only on the .wav sounds, not on discs), Output Accumulator is down. Bring it up. Do I get sound? Of cour not! Bring KMix up. Vol is 100 and PCM is 76, but Line2 is 0. Touch it to raise it, and Gamix Aux1 drops to 0! As I raise KMix Line2, Gamix Aux1 goes up as well. Fine. Finally, I get sound! Warning: If you prize your life, DO NOT touch Gmix! Why? The CD player is working well; the slides in the three mixers (Alsa, Gamix and KMix) are where you want them; you click on the K Menu, Multimedia, Sound, gamix. The gamix window opens WITH ALL the slides down, and instantly, ALL the slides on ALL the mixers go down! Funny, isn't it?
participants (5)
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gilson redrick -
Herman Knief -
Kevin L Hochhalter -
Oliver Fuchs