No CD Audio with ALSA, gentoo-sources 2.6.0

JeffTickle · n00b Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 24 Location: Boone, NC

Howdy all...

Upgrade to 2.6 has been a great success. I love the built-in ALSA, especially, but for some reason, I cannot get CD audio. It worked just fine before the upgrade, and now it doesn't. I haven't made any hardware changes, but I've looked inside the case anyway to make sure something didn't slip loose or something like that... everything's the way it should be.

All my mixer settings are correct as far as I can tell unless there is some special trick you have to do with the EMU10K1 driver that I can't remember. All other sound works fine, and XMMS recognizes CD tracks, correct lengths and everything, but the visualization thignie doesn't show any sound at all, and of course, the sound output from the speakers reflects this very silently.

Also, I've tried running as root just in case there was some weird permissions issue, but it does the same thing as root.

Any ideas?

Krakatoa · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2003 Posts: 30

I'm have exactly the same problem also with an emu10k1 sound card. Did the usual hardware check as well as trying to start xmms and gnome-cd as root. You didn't mention if you have compiled alsa as a module or not. I chose to compile alsa into the kernel. A check of dmesg shows:
ALSA device list:
#0 Sound Blaster Live! (rev.5) at 0xe400, irq 5

Sound works when playing an mp3 in xmms.
Thanks

Krakatoa · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2003 Posts: 30

Jeff,
There are two audio outputs on a sound blaster live card. I found that only one is outputting audio when a cd is playing in gnome-cd. Also I emerge -k alsa-utils which provides alsamixer. Oddly enough when playing an ogg file the audio is present on both card outputs.

The journey continues.

JeffTickle · n00b Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 24 Location: Boone, NC

Yep, MP3s and such work, and dmesg gives me similar results:

ALSA device list:
#0: Sound Blaster Live! (rev.7) at 0xdc00, irq 11

Also, I compiled in as well. I don't have any space concerns, and therefore, all I want is the boot speed that doesn't come from modularizing things ;-)

Like I say, it has worked in the past. However, I didn't mention that it has also not worked in the past, doing the same thing... MP3s, and other sound output are fine, just not the CD audio output. I've had some unrelated hard drive issues and have reinstalled Gentoo a few times over the past few months due to corruption (ended up being a bad power supply actually), and once before (using the 2.4 kernel) I had Alsa, and the CD audio didn't work. Of course, I could reinstall Gentoo again and probably fix it now, but that's not the Linux way of doing things!

What do you mean by the two outputs? do you mean the main and the surround? Of course, for me, the surround only works if the SB Live! Digital/Analog Output Jack setting is off, and I'm pretty sure that's just an emu10k1 thing from what I've seen.

theonly · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 4:29 am Post subject:

Have you checked your mixer settings? (I'd recommend emerging 'gnome-alsamixer') There are two possible CD inputs for the SB Live - the digital and analog CD inputs... the digital CD input appears in alsamixer as 'IEC958 TTL' and the analog CD input is 'CD'

If you have 'CD' turned up and unmuted and get no sound, you might want to try unmuting 'IEC958 TTL' and turning it up while playing a CD and see if that solves your problem.
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JeffTickle · n00b Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 24 Location: Boone, NC

Well, the CD drive is hooked up through digital and not analog, and IEC958 TTL was down at zero. However, when I brought it up, there didn't seem to be any effect.

Do I need to make some kind of alias in alsa's configuration or something like that?

Later on today, I'll see if I can find an analog wire and try that out instead.

Also... is there a list somewhere of the hidden meanings of some of the settings in alsamixer? I've always been curious, but figured I'd just adopt a "don't touch" policy concerning them.

glar00k · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 5:03 pm Post subject:

Hi,

there is also another CD input called AUX. Did you try this one?

Krakatoa · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2003 Posts: 30

Now this is why Iinux and the associated gentoo community is so awesome. After reading some of the threads, bit of head scratching and considerable quantities of ethanol, I found a solution that works for me. First I emerge gnome=alsamixer. Then run the mixer and make sure the mix button is checked in addition to the SB Live Analog/Digital Output Jack. Then scroll all the way to the right and adjust the AC97 volume setting.

Both audio outputs work.
_________________
Linux is composed of 1's and 0's but sco appears to be full of #2

theonly · Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2003 1:46 am Post subject:

AlsaOpensrc.Org should get an award...

Main page for detailed emu10k1 ALSA information:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=emu10k1

More info on each of the mixer controls:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=SbLiveMixerControls

JeffTickle · n00b Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 24 Location: Boone, NC

YES this works for me too!! Although, I left my Analog/Digital Output Jack unchecked, or else surround doesn't work.

However... when playing a CD, it doesn't play through the rear speakers. I'm quite satisfied with just having some CD audio, but still, any thoughts on this one?

Krakatoa · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2003 Posts: 30

My guess is that cd audio is not encoded for surround sound so you should not get a signal to your rear speakers. Try playing some dvd disk, if you can, that has surround sound to test this. I'm not set up for surround so I can't test this.
Cheers mate!
_________________
Linux is composed of 1's and 0's but sco appears to be full of #2

JeffTickle · n00b Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 24 Location: Boone, NC

Yea, DVDs produce surround sound, and CDs produced it in Windows back when I ran that on this system *bad memories* Or rather, the sound card generates it based on the information that isn't there, or something like that.

JeffTickle · n00b Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 24 Location: Boone, NC

So just to experiment a bit, I took a CD and put it in and played it with XMMS... the sound came through the front channel only and there was no bass. That's how all CDs are. they play, but it's not beautiful.

Just out of curiosity, I ripped the CD to ogg with grip. (Oh no, mr. RIAA, please don't sue me for violation of my fair use rights!!) Then I played the ogg files. Sounds BEAUTIFUL. Both the regular and surround channels.. full bass...

So that leads me to believe that even though only one channel of information is stored on my CDs, the sound card or the driver or something emulates the other sounds based on the information from the one track on the CD. After partying all night tonight, I'll check out that list of all the different ALSA controls, perhaps one of them is for CD cool-sound emulation.

Happy New Year!

infamousmrsatan

Ok, I'm having the same problem where all teh sound works EXCEPT the CD player with the CMEDIA CMI8738 sound card. (the driver is called snd-cmipci)

I've pretty much gone into the mixer and unmuted everything... and that hasn't given me any luck. Does anyone have a suggestion to get my cd sound working?

J.S.

EDIT
------
Problem Solved -- I just needed to emerge xmms-cdread (I think that was the package) and then use that plugin to read the cd input digitally.

dwblas · Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2004 9:31 pm Post subject:

I had the same problem with a different sound card. Using gnome-alsamixer, you have to unmute the mixer and also unmute the cd (about the sixth one from the left--it wasn't on the screen for me), otherwise everything works except the cd. To be sure, I unmuted everything. Also, the volume levels obviously have to be turned up. HTH.

Birnenpfluecker · Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2004 4:52 pm Post subject:

Had same problem here, had only to unmute and set CD to 100. Did it with a