Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (4288 mails)
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Re: [SLE] SuSE & audio: This is ridiculous! (Lengthy rant)
- From: - <hbwebb@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 05:49:09 -0700
- Message-id: <20020519124534.CBAC51E3E5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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?
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?
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