alsa questions?

alsa questions?

[Amanda Tink]

Hi everyone,

I realise this is not a direct speakup thing, but I figured you all might 
have some ideas about the sound card problems I'm having.

A friend of mine recently upgraded my machine to Debian 4 and speakup 
4.6.18.  All went well and, as well as my previous cut and paste problems, 
the upgrade fixed some previous sound card problems I was having.  The 
new problems came in when he tried to change my default sound card from my 
Ensoniq card to my Soundblaster Live card.  He followed the instructions 
in the Debian and alsa how-tos.  However, the system will now not load up 
the sound card drivers and will not record.  The arecord error is:
3:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
arecord: main:550: audio open error: No such device

Does anyone have some experience and/or ideas on what we can do? My first 
priority is to just have both cards working again.  And then having the SB 
Live as default would be a bonus.

Thanks all.

Amanda

--
Amanda Tink: Email/MSN amanda@amandatink.net
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that
we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that
most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of
God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world.  (Marianne Williamson)
*Consider all www users: use, support and create text-friendly sites!*

Re: alsa questions?

[Doug Sutherland]

The arecord error is meaningless since the alsa driver for the
card failed to load. It may be the case that udev is loading 
driver modules in an order that is causing problems. It may 
be useful to try booting without udev. Also in a situation like
this some manual loading of modules one by one might shed
some light on the situation.

lsmod will show loaded modules
insmod will install a module
rmmod will remove a module
modprobe is another way to load a module

You could try using rmmod to remove all audio related 
drivers then start loading them one by one watching for
any error messages on load, something like

modprobe snd
modprobe soundcore
modprobe snd-ens1371
modprobe snd-emu10k1
modprobe snd-mixer-oss
modeprobe snd-seq-oss
modprobe snd-pcm-oss

Note there may be options on the modules for the card drivers 
(ensoniq and sblive) that can tweak their configuration on load, 
see the alsa pages for details. Also this may be useful

http://alsa.opensrc.org/MultipleCards

google alsa multiple sound cards
will reveal tons of more info including others' dual sound card 
problems and solutions

Re: alsa questions?

[Amanda Tink]

Hi,

Thank you for all the ideas.  No success so far, but I'll keep going 
through them.

In the meantime, I have what might be a better error for anyone who's good 
with these things, from alsaconf:

  Running              ens1371  Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI
(rev 02)                      update-
  modules...
             emu10k1x Creative Labs [SB Live! Value] EMU10k1X
      Loading
  driver...
             legacy   Probe legacy ISA (non-PnP) chips
   PCI:
  Enabling
device 0000:00:10.0 (0100 -> 0101)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:10.0[A] -> Link [LNKD] -> GSI 9 (level, low)
-> IRQ
9
cannot find the slot for index 0 (range 0-0)
EMU10K1X: probe of 0000:00:0f.0 failed with error -12
Setting default volumes...

Cheers,
Amanda 

--
Amanda Tink: Email/MSN amanda@amandatink.net
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that
we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that
most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of
God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world.  (Marianne Williamson)
*Consider all www users: use, support and create text-friendly sites!*

Re: alsa questions?

[Doug Sutherland]

Amanda,

This sounds like a PCI error of some sort, it appears to probe
the PCI bus and and cannot find the card. The message shows
it assigned an interrupt (IRQ 9) but then says cannot find the 
slot  for index 0 (range 0-0), that could also be related to the 
ACPI which among other things dynamically assigns the 
interrupts. Maybe it is conflicting with the other sound card
or another PCI device. A few things that you could check:

If you do lspci command does it show both sound cards?

Have you tried getting each sound card working separately 
before trying to get them both working at the same time?

In the BIOS settings there is configuration for PCI slots,
you may be able to do manual setting the PCI slots that 
have the cards installed rather choosing auto.

Two other possible BIOS settings you could try are 
turning of the "PnP Aware OS" setting and turning off
the ACPI setting. If you try these try them one at a time
to see if they make any difference.

It would be worthwhile to try to find out what the error
code -12 means on the following error message
EMU10K1X: probe of 0000:00:0f.0 failed with error -12

Perhaps looking at the alsaconf source code would help
determine what triggers the -12 error and what it means,
depends on if the code is well documented.

BTW I love your email signature, continuing on with the
Williamson quote ... There is nothing enlightened about 
shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around 
you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were 
born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. 
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let 
our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people 
permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our 
own fear, our presence automatically liberates others ...

  -- Doug

Re: alsa questions?

[Amanda Tink]

Hi Doug,

Thanks for all your thoughts on this.  One of the things I love about 
linux is there is always a solution, it just needs an idea to put you on 
the right track.  There are specific responses to some of your suggestions 
below.

Doug Sutherland wrote:
> If you do lspci command does it show both sound cards?

Yes it does.

> Have you tried getting each sound card working separately 
> before trying to get them both working at the same time?

I personally haven't, but my friend who did the upgrade said they were 
both working fine before he tried to set the SB Live as the default.  I 
can play ogg files on the ensoniq card.

> In the BIOS settings there is configuration for PCI slots,
> you may be able to do manual setting the PCI slots that 
> have the cards installed rather choosing auto.

Sounds big, but I'm willing to try it if necessary.

> It would be worthwhile to try to find out what the error
> code -12 means on the following error message
> EMU10K1X: probe of 0000:00:0f.0 failed with error -12

Oh, trust me, I have.  And I haven't found anything useful yet.  Though 
that may well be because of my own lack of knowledge.

> Perhaps looking at the alsaconf source code would help
> determine what triggers the -12 error and what it means,

Another good thought.  I'll give it a go.

> BTW I love your email signature, 

Thank you.  The whole thing is beautiful.  I'm glad you quoted it.  I 
never get tired of reading it.

Thank you again.

Amanda

--
Amanda Tink: Email/MSN amanda@amandatink.net
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that
we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that
most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of
God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world.  (Marianne Williamson)
*Consider all www users: use, support and create text-friendly sites!*

Re: alsa questions?

[Gene Collins]

  Hi Amanda!  It looks like you are using the wrong module for the
Sblive Value card.  It should be snd-emu10k1, not snd-emu10k1x.  The
snd-emu10k1x module is for the Dell Creative Labs card, a crummy
software driven version of the sblive card.  Under Linux, it is not
multi channel, and in my experience is most unsatisfactory.  The sblive
value card on the other hand, is a wonderful multi channel sound card. 
Just make sure you are using the correct module, and I think your
problems will disappear.

Gene