Comprehensive Sound Problem Solutions Guide

[Neural oD]

just to give an update to my issue - that was posted earlier. Well I had tried downloading the latest version of ALSA and compiled it from source. Then ran: sudo modprobe snd_hda_intel (obviously this will depend on what sound card you have). This didn't work at first, so I booted into an older kernel then re-installed the latest kernel. Tried to recompile etc - but to no avail. Well yesterday I tried to recompile ALSA - and do the whole modprobe process. All I can say is that it worked - although there was nothing different that I did. Maybe it was because I hadn't shutdown first, but yesterday it just worked. So I would recommend to anyone to get the latest source from ALSA and compile that.

[Neural oD]

I don't know what you mean by "build-essential" and "kernel headers" installed.

As for b, I did the ./configure in exactly the order as instructed in post 1333.

you need to run from the command line: uname -a
take note of which kernel you are using. you should see a string that looks similar to this: 2.6.27-11-generic
then type in: sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-(whatever your kernel is - obviously leave these brackets out)

[baldsue]

Thanks! I did that and I had/have the newest version of linix/linux-headers and build-essential. So I'm back to the question I asked in #1352.

[GepettoBR]

Neural's instructions should have taken care of that. Try compiling the alsa drivers again.

[jaklumen]

Pulling out my hair here...

I used the instructions for getting ALSA drivers from a fresh kernel. This has worked for me in the past.

For some reason when I am running an application, I get a tinny-sounding loop and the entire system freezes. When I reboot (hard reboot), the sound module doesn't load.

e.g. lspci -v shows my soundcard fine.

The soundcard I am using is an SB! Live, so the sound module is emu10k1.

I repeat the instructions for getting ALSA drivers from a fresh kernel. Same thing happens with the tinny-sounding loop onward.

I am using PulseAudio and I have followed psyke's guide- I had to disable the onboard sound (AC'97 I believe) as a workaround to get things to work, i.e. force Pulse to roll down to ALSA on the soundcard. I really don't want to fiddle with that part further; I can live without the jacks working on the front of the case.

As has been said before, if Ubuntu is to emerge as a contender vs. Windows and Mac OS X, sound should not be this difficult. It is the ONLY problem I have had consistently and *persistently* with Ubuntu.

[GepettoBR]

I recently bought a new computer, on which I installed Intrepid. I had no sound, then bad sound, then no sound again... I got it fixed,but it was cumbersome. Before that, I had used very release from Feisty to Intrepid on n older model laptop without problems.

If this new computer were the first one on which I tried Ubuntu, I might not have made the switch from Windows. Jaklumen's point is valid and serious. It's one thin for a few models of wreless cards to require that you install ndiswrapper. It's another story when sound doesn't work altogether on a large proportion of machines.

Jaklumen, I suggest you try compiling alsa-lib from the latest source before the driver. There may be some weird dependency issues causing these problems you described. I eventually fixed my problems by compiling from source every package from the alsa download page. Even Wine works with Pulse without requiring padsp (or at least it did util Wine 1.1.14 came along with over 9000 regressions).

[jaklumen]

Jaklumen, I suggest you try compiling alsa-lib from the latest source before the driver. There may be some weird dependency issues causing these problems you described.

How do I do that, step-by-step? Have patience with me; I have little to no experience compiling things from scratch. For some reason, I don't even have access to the alsa-lib package (Error message E

[GepettoBR]

I'm sorry. Your previous post gave me the impression that you were familiar with the procedure. You can download all the packages from here

Save the files somewhere and extract them (you'll want at least alsa-lib and alsa-drivers. The others may or may not help you with unrelated issues.) to separate folders (Right-click > Extract Here...).

Then, open a Terminal and navigate to the alsa-lib folder (by typing "cd /path/to/folder/" without the quotes). From there, all you have to do is run

./configure
make
sudo make install

and repeat the process for alsa-driver, and anyother package you might have downloaded.

[jaklumen]

I'm sorry. Your previous post gave me the impression that you were familiar with the procedure. You can download all the packages from here

It's just a matter of committing it to memory-- I've done it before but haven't memorized it.

Save the files somewhere and extract them (you'll want at least alsa-lib and alsa-drivers. The others may or may not help you with unrelated issues.)

Ok, I downloaded alsa-lib, alsa-drivers, alsa-utils, and alsa-oss, to basically update the packages I already have installed. alsa-lib and alsa-drivers compiled without a hitch, but I got an error message on alsa-utils:

checking for libasound headers version >= 1.0.16... not present.
configure: error: Sufficiently new version of libasound not found.

I have libasound2 installed, so I'm not sure if that's the problem, or what.

Still not getting sound at all. Also, Synaptic doesn't show the updated version numbers.

[GepettoBR]

I believe you'd need the -dev package of libasound (libasound2-dev, likely). If the lib and driver packages installed correctly, you can load the new driver for your soundcard with "modprobe <driver-name>". I believe you've already said what the driver is in another post, so just fill that in. Sound should work after a reboot.