Sound Problems

[wordler]

Hi guys!
I've always had a dislike for the way pulse and alsa work (or not) together. Finally I have completely uninstalled pulse and am just using alsa with alsamixer and alsaequal for eq, controlled by qas because it looks nicer! It sounds much better, and is much more simple with just one volume control.
I am quite happy, but there is one problem: in certain cases alsa will only play the sound from one application at a time, so sometimes there is no alert or notification sound. Usually it is ok with panel notifications but mozilla firefox and thunderbird will not play nicely at all. Does anyone have any ideas or information about this?
This is something I only did the other day, so I am still experimenting. I do not want to go back to using pulse though. It seems like a poor idea. I am a sound engineer, so I have experience with professional sound equipment, but computer sound is not something I am yet familiar with. I hope to be able to come up with a good working solution. 

[gediminas]

I've been using Manjaro for quite some time now, and I think my sound issue started after one of the system updates.

Basically, every time I reboot (or shutdown, turn on, doesn't matter), there's no sound, although volume icon indicates that it's not muted. I can also pull volum handle up or down with no effect whatsoever. I can press fn+f8 to mute and unmute - still no audio (icon responds by turning grey).

The only solution that works is when I plug in the headphones (audio is present in the headphones all the time), plug them out, and suddenly the sound is on again. Any thoughts?
Using XFCE desktop with pulseaudio and alsa, if that helps

[erik]

I have no  sound either. Not on any distribution like ubuntu, debian. I do have sound on windows.
I am trying manjaro wich i see is a very nice distribution but no sound. Could it be my hda-intel PCH on my medion akoya.
I have no idea. Maybe someone knows a solution. No sound on htlm5 on youtube also. Or should this be another topic

[Kat]

@erik Would help if you add some hardware info on your Profile.. I am not an expert on sound issues...But anyhow for what its worth.. The first of many things that I install on Manjaro is "pavucontrol "  A GTK volume control for PulseAudio  fixes sound immediately..  Find out what sound card you are using 

Code: [Select]

aplay -l and go into config and disable everything but your main sound card.. Works for me Hope this helps Kat 

[Verändert2.0]

And if you don't know what to put on your profile, just post output of

Code: [Select]

inxi -F

[Kat]

And if you don't know what to put on your profile, just post output of

Code: [Select]

inxi -F

wow didn't know that command cool Verändert2.0 

[erik]

oke thanks. I try.

Code: [Select]

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: CX20585 Analog [CX20585 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: CX20585 Digital [CX20585 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

On the second this follows

System:    Host: erik Kernel: 3.12.22-1-MANJARO x86_64 (64 bit)
           Desktop: Xfce 4.11.6git-UNKNOWN Distro: ManjaroLinux 0.8.10 Ascella
Machine:   Mobo: Medion model: P7621 v: 1.0
           Bios: American Megatrends v: 205 date: 08/03/2011
CPU:       Dual core Intel Core i5-2430M (-HT-MCP-) cache: 3072 KB
           Clock Speeds: 1: 1433 MHz 2: 2408 MHz 3: 2478 MHz 4: 1617 MHz
Graphics:  Card-1: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller
           Card-2: NVIDIA GF108M [GeForce GT 540M]
           Display Server: X.Org 1.15.1 driver: intel
           Resolution: 1600x900@60.31hz
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Sandybridge Mobile
           GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 10.2.1
Audio:     Card Intel 6 Series/C200 Series Family High Definition Audio Controller
           driver: snd_hda_intel
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k3.12.22-1-MANJARO
Network:   Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR8151 v2.0 Gigabit Ethernet driver: atl1c
           IF: enp5s0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full
           mac: 38:60:77:a0:92:45
           Card-2: Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030 [Rainbow Peak]
           driver: iwlwifi
           IF: wlp3s0 state: down mac: ac:72:89:9a:08:44
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 640.1GB (1.0% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: Hitachi_HTS54756 size: 640.1GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 398G used: 4.9G (2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda3
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 1.00GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda5
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 60.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 52.0
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 145 Uptime: 1:05 Memory: 841.7/3867.0MB
           Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.1.28




[Verändert2.0]

Now that is strange. That HW should work OOTB. Please post output of

Code: [Select]

lspci | grep Audio just to make sure.

[erik]

I hope this helps.

Code: [Select]

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)ll
I did install pavucontrol. But whatever i change on that does not
help. Nothing is muted.

[Kat]

I hope this helps.

Code: [Select]

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)ll
I did install pavucontrol. But whatever i change on that does not
help. Nothing is muted.

@erik Please erik in the future ..Try and code your terminal outputs.. makes for easier understanding when someone is trying to help you TY Kat
 

[Kat]

I hope this helps.

Code: [Select]

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)ll
I did install pavucontrol. But whatever i change on that does not
help. Nothing is muted.

Yes Verändert2.0 is correct should work ootb.. I have the same onboard audio and works fine.. but I am not using my onboard audio at the moment!  are your cable connections correct?

set it like this BUT in your case you would disable others and enable Intel HDA

[erik]

I will try.
I did copy both times from the terminal. I believe with quick reply it dit put it in grey and normal reply it did not. But I problably misunderstand you. Please explain so that I will do it right the next time.

Code: [Select]

something like this I see that I have got it right. Thanks for the tip.

Ik wil put a printscreen now from the 2 volume controls.
It shows different output. The 2 on the left are mine

It started with having sound for a few seconds or a few minutes. After that the sound was gone on everything. Also on musicplayers (mp3, htlm5 everything on every linux). Now it is completely gone.

And maybe some extra information

Code: [Select]

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
Subsystem: Pegatron Device 20af
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 51
Memory at f7000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [60] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
Capabilities: [130] Root Complex Link
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel
Update: Same problem is starting on windows as well. After a minute or so no sound anymore. Maybe it is the hardware. Someone maybe having an idea how to solve it?

[kmcclry1]

I've been trying to troubleshoot this for a few days now. You can find my progress here: https://teksyndicate.com/forum/linux/speakers-laptop-not-working-headphones-are/184425.

It seems that I have the same audio setup with my laptop as the poster/previous user to post specs. Maybe its an issue with the hardware but I think I've narrowed it to a problem with ALSA since I've had the issue with both the XFCE and the GNOME/PulseAudio implementations. If anyone finds anything interesting amongst my ramblings that help to figure this out it would be very helpful.

[IceGuru]

I too am having sound issues.

It's low. Any ideas?

[kmcclry1]

To add more detail to my situation for those who may be able to help with this problem.

I've now tried Antergos and Fedora Live environments, and also booting into my Windows partition (stupid Matlab for school...) and I've had issues in all of them. This warrants some more information about my previous operating systems and how they interacted.

Before dual-booting Manjaro I was using Fedora 20 and Windows. Audio worked just fine at the time. I had learned quite a bit while using Fedora and felt a little more confident to move to a system based on Arch. I then install Manjaro and the issues began. Audio becomes as described in my post that I link to in my last post here. I worked through trying different things for PulseAudio and Gnome, I then worked through switching to XFCE and removing Pulse all together in order to see if that was the problem (it wasn't). I then tried messing with ALSA (which to be fair I probably haven't exhausted the possibilities) but I'm finding that alsamixer is saying sound is being output to correct interfaces, those interfaces aren't muted, etc. I know it is in fact doing that because audio will play for a few minutes through the speakers and then all of a sudden turn off (headphones still work when plugged in). I then went to a friend's house last night to LAN and I booted up Windows for the first time in a while. I tried my Windows partition and here's where I and @erik are definitely having the same problem with the same hardware. My Windows partition will begin playing a video for instance, it will play for a little bit and then mute like within linux, but this time if I move to another buffered area of the video, it will reset and play audio for another minute or so. I had never had these issues within Windows before with Fedora, so I figured I'd try a live environment of Antergos, to see if it was a Manjaro thing (Arch base being equal), and Fedora, to see if that still worked (spoiler, it didn't).

So here we are, a week ago I had audio playing through my speakers, installed Manjaro and have had issues since. I don't know if there is something that Manjaro updated micro-code on the processor, or made some persistent change to the audio, but something happened that has affected audio across distributions and completely different OSes.