Attachment 100953 Details for Bug 123631 – Report on sound system woes

Report on sound system woes

alsa-problem-report.txt (text/plain), 7.30 KB, created by Christopher Beland on 2004-06-08 06:43:55 UTC

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Creator: Christopher Beland

Created: 2004-06-08 06:43:55 UTC

Size: 7.30 KB

patch

obsolete

>
>This is with:
> Fedora Core 2
> sox-12.17.4-2.1
> alsa-utils-1.0.3-1
> alsa-lib-1.0.3a-2
> kernel-2.6.5-1.358
> modutils-2.4.26-16
>
>
>I tried a bunch of different sound players with a bunch of different
>output mechanisms, and got wildly varying results.
>
>As others have described, some programs behave better after turning up
>a certain volume setting.  The only one that works for me is the
>Master volume (not PCM) in the OSS mixer.  I discovered this can be
>done in XMMS (with the OSS output plugin enabled and the plugin's
>"Mixer controls Master not PCM" preference set to "yes") or in
>gnome-volume-control (the Master slider on the OSS tab only).
>
>Yes, when I run gnome-volume control, it has two tabs:
> NeoMagic NM256AV [Alsa Mixer]
> SigmaTel STAC9704 [Audio Mixer (OSS)]
>
>"lspci -v" says this:
>01:00.1 Multimedia audio controller: Neomagic Corporation NM2200 [MagicMedia 256AV Audio] (rev 20)
>        Subsystem: Dell Computer Corporation: Unknown device 0088
>        Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 5
>        Memory at fac00000 (32-bit, prefetchable)
>        Memory at fda00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
>        Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 1
>
>
>alsamixer seems to work, though there are lots of unused controls.
>
>
>Here are the results of my sound player trials:
>
>Player: XMMS
>Output: ALSA plugin
>File types: OGG, WAV, MP3
>Result before volume change: Program loads OK, but when trying to play
> music, it freezes.  ps and killall no longer work, and I have to
> reboot uncleanly. (!)
>Result after volume change: Same as before.
>
>Player: XMMS
>File types: OGG, WAV, MP3
>Output: OSS plugin
>Result before volume change: Volume slider starts at 0%.  Seems to
> play fine (shows progress bar, changing output levels) but there is
> no audio.  If XMMS is set to control PCM volume, changing the volume
> has no effect.  Set to control master, it works.
>Result after volume change: Volume slider starts at 0%; moving the
> slider controls the volume.  (Changing the PCM setting in aumix after
> the volume fix also works.)
>
>Player: XMMS
>File types: OGG, WAV, MP3
>Output: esound plugin
>Result before volume change: Seems to play normally (shows progress
> bar, changing output levels) but no audio.  Volume slider starts at
> 100% and has no effect.
>Result after volume change: Plays normally, except there is
> lots of skipping in the audio stream.
>
>Player: ogg123
>Audio Device:   Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) output
>File types: OGG
>Result before volume change: Seems to play file (shows progress bar),
> but there's no audio.  After a while, displays the error message
> "ALSA: underrun, at least 0ms."
>Result after volume change: Works normally.
>
>Player: ogg123 -d oss
>Audio Device:   OSS audio driver output
>File types: OGG
>Result after volume change: Works normally.
>
>Player: ogg123 -d esd
>Audio Device:   ESounD output
>File types: OGG
>Result after volume change: Works normally, except there is a lot of
> skipping in the audio stream (as with xmms), as if the CPU can't keep
> up.  But CPU usage is below 30%.
>
>Player: aplay 
>Output: ALSA
>File types: WAV
>Result before volume change:
> Playing WAVE 'testfile.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 22050 Hz, Mono
> aplay: pcm_write:1083: write error: Input/output error
> (no audio)
>Result after volume change:
> Playing WAVE 'testfile.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 22050 Hz, Mono
>  (The audio starts to play, then gets stuck and plays the same
>   half-second or so clip of about ten times, then dies with the
>   following.)
> aplay: pcm_write:1083: write error: Input/output error
>
>Player: play
>Output: OSS
>File types: WAV
>Result before volume change: Seems to play, runs for the right amount
> of time, but no audio.
>Result after volume change: Works normally.
>
>
>
>A workaround to an unrelated PCMCIA bug in FC2 involves unloading all
>the related kernel modules and restarting the service, so I tried
>doing that for the sound system:
>
>rmmod soundcore snd snd_mixer_oss snd_timer snd_ac97_codec snd_pcm snd_page_alloc snd_nm256
>ERROR: Module soundcore is in use by snd
>ERROR: Module snd is in use by snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_nm256,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer
>ERROR: Module snd_mixer_oss is in use by snd_pcm_oss
>ERROR: Module snd_timer is in use by snd_pcm
>ERROR: Module snd_ac97_codec is in use by snd_nm256
>ERROR: Module snd_pcm is in use by snd_pcm_oss,snd_nm256
>ERROR: Module snd_page_alloc is in use by snd_pcm
>ERROR: Module snd_nm256 is in use
>
>I assume that's normal.
>
>I tried turning off prelinking, but that didn't make any difference as
>far as I could tell.
>
>
>---LOGIN: ATTEMPT 1---
>Jun  4 14:31:32 big-bucks kernel: PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 0000:01:00.1
>Jun  4 14:31:32 big-bucks kernel: nm256: found card signature in video RAM: 0x27ec00
>Jun  4 14:31:32 big-bucks kernel: nm256: Mapping port 1 from 0x2709a0 - 0x27ec00
>Jun  4 14:31:32 big-bucks gconfd (beland-3452): starting (version 2.6.0), pid 3452 user 'beland'
>Jun  4 14:31:32 big-bucks gconfd (beland-3452): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory" to a read-only config source at position 0
>Jun  4 14:31:32 big-bucks gconfd (beland-3452): Resolved address "xml:readwrite:/home/beland/.gconf" to a writable config source at position 1
>Jun  4 14:31:32 big-bucks gconfd (beland-3452): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults" to a read-only config source at position 2
>Jun  4 14:31:38 big-bucks bonobo-activation-server (beland-3457): iid OAFIID:BrokenNoType:20000808 has a NULL type
>Jun  4 14:31:38 big-bucks bonobo-activation-server (beland-3457): invalid character '#' in iid 'OAFIID:This#!!%$iid%^$%_|~!OAFIID_ContainsBadChars'
>Jun  4 14:31:47 big-bucks modprobe: FATAL: Error running install command for sound_slot_1
>Jun  4 14:32:16 big-bucks modprobe: FATAL: Error running install command for sound_slot_1
>
>---LOGIN: ATTEMPT 2---
>Jun  5 16:36:54 big-bucks gdm(pam_unix)[3339]: session opened for user beland by (uid=0)
>Jun  5 16:36:57 big-bucks gconfd (beland-3454): starting (version 2.6.0), pid 3454 user 'beland'
>Jun  5 16:36:58 big-bucks gconfd (beland-3454): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory" to a read-only config source at position 0
>Jun  5 16:36:58 big-bucks gconfd (beland-3454): Resolved address "xml:readwrite:/home/beland/.gconf" to a writable config source at position 1
>Jun  5 16:36:58 big-bucks gconfd (beland-3454): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults" to a read-only config source at position 2
>Jun  5 16:37:04 big-bucks bonobo-activation-server (beland-3459): iid OAFIID:BrokenNoType:20000808 has a NULL type
>Jun  5 16:37:04 big-bucks bonobo-activation-server (beland-3459): invalid character '#' in iid 'OAFIID:This#!!%$iid%^$%_|~!OAFIID_ContainsBadChars'
>Jun  5 16:37:13 big-bucks kernel: PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 0000:01:00.1
>Jun  5 16:37:13 big-bucks kernel: nm256: found card signature in video RAM: 0x27ec00
>Jun  5 16:37:13 big-bucks kernel: nm256: Mapping port 1 from 0x2709a0 - 0x27ec00Jun  5 16:37:14 big-bucks modprobe: FATAL: Error running install command for sound_slot_1
>Jun  5 16:37:40 big-bucks modprobe: FATAL: Error running install command for sound_slot_1
>
>
>--- /etc/modprobe.conf ---
>
>alias eth0 3c589_cs
>alias snd-card-0 snd-nm256
>install snd-nm256 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-nm256 && /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
>remove snd-nm256 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-nm256
>alias usb-controller uhci-hcd

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Attachments on bug 123631: 100597 | 100953