[alsa-devel] no sound with intel audio

[Petr Maivald]

On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 6:21 PM, Takashi Iwai <tiwai at suse.de> wrote:
> At Fri, 30 May 2014 18:05:06 +0200,
> Petr Maivald wrote:
>>
>> > As a primary test, for example, try the following on a terminal:
>> >
>> >   % amixer -c1 set "Auto-Mute Mode" "Enabled"
>> >   % aplay -Dplughw:1 -vv some-your-file.wav
>> >
>> > where some-your-file.wav is any WAV file you'd like to hear.
>> >
>> > If you're using PulseAudio, try like below instead:
>> >
>> >   % pasuspender -- aplay -D plughw:1 -vv some-your-file.wav
>> >
>> > Does it play anything?  Try both the headphone plugged and unplugged.
>>
>> My apologies, I did seriously try to figure out how to figure this out
>> and didn't come across anything that made any sense. So, I thought it
>> was a kernel bug...
>>
>> Your suggestion to try aplay did indeed produce sound. It is the first
>> sound I was able to get out of this configuration ever. I attached the
>> output of alsa-info.sh with aplay playing, and with mplayer playing
>> and not working, and the diff. Thanks for your help, at least now I
>> have some clue about where to look.
>
> Well, I still don't know what you did try.  This should have been
> clarified in the first ground.  Are you using PulseAudio?  If so, take
> a look at the mixer, pavucontrol, etc, and which output is being
> selected.  On your machine, the first device is HDMI, not the onboard
> audio.
>
> If you're using the direct ALSA API without PA, it's likely HDMI being
> picked up as the primary output.  You can change the device init order
> via index module option or specify the default card number in
> ~/.asoundrc or /etc/asound.conf in that case.

Outstanding! You rock! I had no luck figuring out how to change the
device init order via index module option, but I googled around and
found that I can set /etc/asound.conf to

pcm.!default {
    type hw
    card PCH
}

ctl.!default {
    type hw
    card PCH
}

And, that did the trick! Now I have sound!

So, apparently I'm using the direct ALSA API without PA since mixer,
pavucontrol, and pasuspender is not installed. To go back to your
question of what I did try, I was running Flash, Gnome Mplayer,
Audacious, and VLC. I guess I neglected to mention that since the
sound problem didn't seem related to the media players (they all had
the same no sound problem).

Sorry about the earlier confusion. I was trying to figure out dozens
of configuration files without knowing what was relevant or installed,
etc.

Peter