On Sun, Dec 01, 2013 at 11:03:09AM -0800, Bill Unruh wrote: > On Sun, 1 Dec 2013, wempwer@xxxxxxxxx wrote: > > >On my way to become an advanced Linux user I started to learn > >ALSA. However, it seems that ALSA, and sound system in general on > >Linux, is in a pretty bad state at the moment. Here are the examples - > >don't get me wrong, fix me if I got things wrong: > > The write up it poor. Also itself operages quite well. > > > > >1) my work computer with Ubuntu has HDA Intel PCH soundcard > >installed. Moving PCM slider in alsamixer or muting it has no > >effect. This happens both when pulseaudio server is stopped and > > pulseaudio is NOT alsa. I mentioned pulseaudio to show you that PCM slider is useless in alsamixer in both situations and that ALSA itself has even problems with setting volume correctly. > >running. Moreover, manipulating volume slider inside pavucontrol > >results in higher volume than when Master and Speakers are set to > >maximum in alsamixer alone. That means, if I set a maximum volume > >inside pavucontrol I can hear sound louder because even if volume is > >set to maximum in alsamixer it is only about 50% in pavucontrol. > > > >2) my home laptop HP Pavilion DV6 3015ew with Slackware has HDA ATI SB > >soundcard installed. Here, moving PCM slider in alsamixer changes > >volume correctly but PCM cannot be muted. Nothing happens in alsamixer > >when I press `m', and amixer says: > > Probably because your soundcard has no mute. How can I check it? Is there a list of soundcards with their capabilites somewhere or do I need to look for it blindly on the internet? It seems strange to me that soundcard cannot be muted. > > > >$ amixer set PCM mute > >amixer: Invalid command! > > > >pulseaudio is not running here. Why is PCM observed behavior not > >coherent between 1) and 2) ? > > > >3) my Toshiba n550d netbook has 2 soundcards - alsamixer shows > >"HD-Audio Generic" and "HDA ATI SB". What is bad is that the first > >card is set as default but it has no controls in alsamixer apart from > >"S/PDIF". Why this has happened? It brings some problems in programs > >that pick the first available card and treat it as default. For > >example, mocp says: > > > >Running the server... > >Trying OSS... > > oss is not alsa. > > > > >FATAL_ERROR: No valid sound driver > > > >FATAL_ERROR: Server exited > > > >I needed to the following to $HOME/.moc/config: > > > >AlsaDevice = hw:1,0 > > And that solves it? Seems to be a problem with mocp. There seems to be a problem with ALSA which cannot even pass correct information to a client program. > > > > >4) What's the relationship between Alsa, PulseAudio and OSS? On my HP > > Alsa is the sound card driver layer in Linux. Oss was another sound card > driver completely different from alsa, but alsa developers created an OSS > simultion layer so that sound systems which expected to use oss could do so. > It is a translation layer which translates oss to alsa commands. > Pulse audio is an entirely separate layer above all of those. It was > developed > to allow mixing of sound sources and as one unified layer so that all programs > would see the same sound interface, no matter what the hardware underneath > was. Unfortunately its plans and its execution do not always coincide. > > >Pavilion laptop I installed Linphone, a cool SIP client but I wasn't > >able to use it with my in-built mic until I set capture device to > >"OSS: /dev/dsp" in Linphone. I was looking for some general > >information on how to configure a microphone and I found this: > >http://alsa.opensrc.org/Record_from_mic. However, this guide contains > >expressions such as "I am not sure about that" or "Other things to > >try: " and a list of random thoughts follows. And about PulseAudio, I > >remember back in days that killing PulseAudio was the very first thing > >to do after starting the system to able to hear any sound at all. > > It has apparently gotten better but still can be problematic. > > Note that its purpose was precisely to hide all of the sound details from the > user. > > Remember that there are probably about 1000 different sound cards out there, > each of which decides to do things differently because the > manufacturer/developer knows better than everyone else ( or maybe so that they > can be proprietary and stop anyone else from doing anything with the soundcard > so that they are the only source for software.) > > > > > > >5) My parents have Acer Aspire d255. It has some problems with > >in-built microphone - it doesn't work. This bug describes it: > >https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/940841. Does anybody > >know if this problem is solved now in new kernel, new ALSA or is it > >solved at all? My parents are computer illiterate, they used to have > >Windows 7 Starter on this machine but it took it like 15 minutes to > >start so I removed it and installed Ubuntu for them. Now I have to > >explain to them why the microphone doesn't work out of the box. > > No idea. See my answer to 4. > > > > >6) A few months ago I got myself Creative bluetooth speakers. I have > >the following in my ~/.asoundrc.conf: > > > >Quote: > >pcm.bluetooth { > >type bluetooth > >device 00:02:3C:20:1D:5E > >} > > > >pcm.!default { > >type plug > >slave.pcm "bluetooth" > >} > > > >Some programs such as xmms2 can pick these settings correctly and play > >music on speakers, but some others such as mplayer can't do that and I > >always have to pass "-ao alsa:device=bluetooth" what's really annoying > >(I could create an alias for that but it's just a workaround and not a > > Sorry, telling theprogram which sound output to use is a "workaround"? Surely > you do not expect your computer to read your mind as well. Your computer has > other sound output devices. How is it to know which one you want unless you > tell it? So why do we have ALSA config in the first place? I wrote my custom config and I expect programs to use it. Why should I, as an beginner Linux user fight with such hilarious problems? > >real solution). What's even more, I can't play sound in 2 programs > >simultaneously - only one program at a time can play sound. If I open > >a flash video in Firefox, I need to close it before I can play a song > >in xmms2. xmms2 for example is saying: > > That was one of the reasons why pulseaudio was developed, to allow > simultaneous playing of multiple sources. Alsa is a "single source" system. It > does not have a mixer front end. How to tell pulseaudio to also > handle the bluetooth I do not know. It is > probably possible. > > > > > > > >Please check that: > > > >Your sound card is configured properly > >You have the correct output plugin selected > >No other program is blocking the sound card > > > >That's all. I am quite worried about all of these. It makes me thing > >that Linux is still not ready for wider adoption amongst casual users. > -- <wempwer@xxxxxxxxx> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rapidly troubleshoot problems before they affect your business. Most IT organizations don't have a clear picture of how application performance affects their revenue. With AppDynamics, you get 100% visibility into your Java,.NET, & PHP application. Start your 15-day FREE TRIAL of AppDynamics Pro! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=84349351&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Alsa-user mailing list Alsa-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user
