[SOLVED] Sound not working - snd_hda_intel on Inspiron 9400

elitecodex · n00b Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 30 Location: MD

Hello everyone.

I have Gentoo up and running on my Dell Inspiron 9400 and all is well for the exception of my sound card. I have tried using ALSA that was built into the kernel as well as alsa-drivers package (which is currently installed). I've tried everything I can think of and am totally stomped.

Here is my lspci output:

tuam · l33t Joined: 04 May 2004 Posts: 765 Location: CGN, Germany

More often than not, snd_hda_intel seems to need a "kick in the right direction". The kernel documentation has a list of possible "module" parameters in "Documentation/sound/alsa/ALSA-Configuration.txt". Look up which best fits yours and try to load the snd-hda-intel module with that as parameter.

FF,

Daniel
_________________
Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. - Spock
The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many. - Kirk
I refuse to let arithmetic decide questions like that. - Picard

elitecodex · n00b Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 30 Location: MD

Ok, I looked at the documentation and the parameters did not help. I tried to "rmmod" and modprobe the module with many different parameters, including position_fix=1 and position_fix=2, and single_cmd=1, none of which worked. Didnt appear that anything changed after re-loading the module.

Any other ideas?

tuam · l33t Joined: 04 May 2004 Posts: 765 Location: CGN, Germany

From the text, it should need "model=ref". Some people say it may need "position_fix=1" (but you might want to wait with that) -> https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-436869.html

I don't have an Inspiron, so I can't test

FF,

Daniel
_________________
Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. - Spock
The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many. - Kirk
I refuse to let arithmetic decide questions like that. - Picard

shazza · Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 10:10 pm Post subject:

I put my Inspiron 9400 on Ebay last month, so I'm not 100% sure how many and what controls I did have. I am sure however, that 1) I had sound with snd_hda_intel out of the box and 2) I needed position_fix (1, I think) to get rid of some sound distortions and to fix headphone detection.

You did unmute the all channels with alsamixer and then tried to play a soundfile?

Sounds more like a problem with KMix (and the whole circus related with it) to me.

Also there's a whole thread about this specific notebook!

elitecodex · n00b Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 30 Location: MD

Yeah, I found that thread this morning and did try it per his exact instructions... no luck. Thats how I ended up here. Although I am farther than I was before.

I'll try the model thing and see how it works... when I open alsamixer I can only change "Master" and "Capture" both of which are maxed out.

And yes, I have some mp3's that I tried to play with no luck (and a few movies also).

Any other ideas? I'll investigate the model parameter to see if that helps.. Thanks for the help!!

cool_smile · n00b Joined: 29 May 2007 Posts: 11

I have an Inspiron 1300. Here comes some information:

elitecodex · n00b Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 30 Location: MD

Thanks for the reply cool_smile. Regretfully nothing has worked as of yet... I did try passing the model parameter per the ALSA-Configuration.txt.

I also tried upgrading to 2.6.21-gentoo.r2 with the new alsa-driver also (the one I had installed would not work with the new kernel... got some compiler errors). In any event, Im right back to where I was in the old kernel. The modules are loaded, udev appears to pick up the sound card and loads the module... alsaconf picks up the sound card and says it appears to be there... Im at a loss.

Any other ideas? Im about ready to try anything at this point

Any kind of debugging info I can enable to help pin-point why this is going on? Never had so many sound probs before...

Dale_the_Titled · n00b Joined: 16 Jan 2004 Posts: 26

I've got the same problem with a System76 Darter. I can't get Intel HDA modules to work with gentoo-sources higher than 2.6.20 for some reason. Sucks because I'm wanting to try out the suspend2 sources. I've tried putting model=laptop in the modules.d, but I'm not sure if that's the 'correct' model. I still haven't figured it out, but thought I'd chime in.

pholthau · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:21 am Post subject:

For me it works with this /etc/modules.d/alsa and alsa-driver from portage (not the in-kernel ones):

MoridinBG · n00b Joined: 24 May 2007 Posts: 13

Does snd-hda_intel support 5.1? When I enable Surround control and/or 6ch mode I got terrible high frequency noise and when I change the sound level either from alsamixer or KMix the sound mutes until I do "alsasound restart".

elitecodex · n00b Joined: 15 Mar 2005 Posts: 30 Location: MD

Well, for some reason unknown to me, my sound started working... it was apparently something in relation to KDE.

I stumbled upon a website in Firefox that was playing some sound... and surprisingly it came through. Although mplayer or anything else would play sound. I re-emerged mplayer with alsa support and voila! However, mplayer and alsaplayer seems to be the only thing that is playing sound... mp3blaster says it cannot open the sound device, along with juk and amarok... so I suppose its partially cured. Just have to find out how to get all these other apps to see the sound device. I am re-emerging kdebase-meta at the moment without arts support and alsa enabled globally. Maybe something will work?

Thanks for all that helped.... I just wish that I could pinpoint what exactly made it work.