[alsa-devel] no sound with intel audio

[Takashi Iwai]

At Sat, 31 May 2014 13:47:59 +0200,
Petr Maivald wrote:
> 
> 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!

It's close to the solution, but the drawback of this setup is that you
cannot play multiple streams at the same time.  Instead, you can pass
the PCM definition like:

  pcm.!default sysdefault:PCM
  
Then dmix and dsnoop will be used for simultaneous accesses.
The ctl definition can be what you used.

But, as mentioned, another solution is to swap the devices in the
driver level.  Instead of the ~/.asoundrc setup, pass index=1,0 option
to snd-hda-intel module.  Then the order of PCM and HDMI will be
swapped.


Takashi

> 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
>