No sound....

[admart35]

I've tried the

alsa=emu10k1

but there still isn't any sound... I installed Knoppix onto my harddrive and I have a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy sound card.....

thx in advance for any help recieved...

Alvin,

[Cuddles]

admart35,

two ideas I have...

1 ) Have you run alsaconf -=- you did say you hard drive installed Knoppix, right? -=- Be sure you disable any other sound drivers; i.e. OSS, aRts, etc... and try running the above command, from a root Konsole...

2 ) ALSA should be installed already, it just needs to be configured, setup, and activated for use... ( the last I knew )... You can always, as a last ditch effort, go after the nice people in the ALSA Mailing lists - these people send and recvive emails, through a mailing list for ALSA issues... Not quite sure how I got on there list, some time ago, but, here is a link that might get you started... ...here... ( it comes at the bottom of every email you get from this mailing list, so, it must be of some use, either to activate yourself (new), or deactivate (remove), yourself from the list...

Hope this helps,
Ms. Cuddles

[Growlor]

I was having a similar problem and running alsaconf helped thanks cuddles!
My sound hardware is a Sound Blaster Audigy (I think its the "gamer" version, but it might be the "value" one - I am not sure) and I use the Cambridge FPS2000 Digital speakers using the proprietary digital interface.
To enable sound I did the following:
Booted Knoppix 4.0 DVD using "knoppix alsa=emu10k"
After the system booted, I ran a shell and switched to root mode with "su"
I then ran the "alsaconf" command Cuddles mentioned in (the now root mode) shell screen.
If you don't have the digital output I think you are done now. However, if you do use it (like me), then do the following too:
Run "alsamixer" in the same root enabled shell. Scroll over to the right to the "Audigy A" option (you have to keep going to the right with the arrow key and it will scoll into the screen - alsamixer has many different settings, so not all of them are displayed when you first launch it) and press "m" to un-mute the digital output's sound! (this took me 2 YEARS of digging around to find.) If you have a 4.1 system like mine you also want to scroll over to the "Surround" option and turn-up the volume for the rear speakers. I also bumped-up the sampling rate by moving to the "Audigy S option and pressing the up arrow key so it read 96000. Then press escape.
Sit back and enjoy awesome sound.
Think kind thoughts and say "thank you" to all the people in the open source community who's hard work made it possible for us to enjoy this (maybe even kick in a few $ to you favorite projects too.)


Growlor

[Cuddles]

Growlor, good points...

alsamixer is a "key" ingredient, in the alsa arsenol, of getting your sound system working. When I went from a motherboard sound card, over to a nice SB Pro PCI, alsamixer became this huge, side-scrolling, monster of all kinds of settings. Half of which, I dont use... I export my sound to an external amp, and home theater set up. But, a good sound card was still needed because of my "side business" ( digitizing all kinds of audio sources, and turning them into digital CD audio discs for customers ).

If you hard drive install, then, you can add into all of this, the alsactl command. Very important, unless you want to manually set your sound settings on each boot, by hand...

On most of my "hard drive" installed "Debian" systems, the proper use of the following, has lended itself to a working alsa sound system...

alsaconf
alsamixer
alsactl store

... and then, after having the settings saved, by the use of the above alsactl command, I usually find, placing the following, at the very bottom of the /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh file:

alsactl restore

the above command will then, reset your sound settings to what they were last saved as, upon booting.

If alsaconf, or alsa itself, doesnt seem to work, then something, most of the time, is blocking, or "knocking" it out. ALSA does not work well when other sound systems are running at the same time, actually, not sure of this, but, this is what I heard, alsa isnt really the problem, its the "other" sound system, that is the real problem. As in the case of KDE, and OSS, or is it aRts?, anyway, that sound system will actually take over the sound, and not allow any other sound system access, thus, alsa will not work if this sound system is running. Sometimes, "fragments" of that "other" sound system will stay resident, even after a sucessfull running and configuring of alsa. Resulting in, alsa wont work. Using lsmod, and looking through the output, is your only recourse. Most of the modules that are used in alsa, all have the snd... pre-name in them. If you find that alsa isnt working, and that nothing errored out in an alsaconf, then a good look through the lsmod output is the next option... Sometimes you will find that your sound card is reported two places in the module output, one is the alsa usage, the other, that "other" sound system, removing that module may get your alsa working, and, in that case, it is only a matter of locating where in the module setup files, that module is being loaded, and comment it out...

Oh well. maybe too much information, but, sometimes, it does help...
Ms. Cuddles

[admart35]

ok...thx... sound is fixed.....

[Growlor]

FYI. I noticed what I believe was a flaw in my post above, I think I should have said 'Booted Knoppix 4.0 DVD using "knoppix alsa=emu10k1" ' instead of 'Booted Knoppix 4.0 DVD using "knoppix alsa=emu10k" ' . However I have tried it both ways and also booted knoppix without specifying any entry for alsa (ie I just pressed enter and let Knoppix run its normal boot process.) All 3 methods seemed to work, so I think we can strike that step.
This means that the real fixer for my problem was using the alsaconf (and then alsamixer.) This means Cuddles was "more right" than I realized!
Thanks again Cuddles.

Growlor

[Cuddles]

Growlor,

Thanks, but, I think it was a "mutual" fix... ( you had some points, I had some points, the sum total of us both, got the complete answer )

I've never worked on the "digital" stuff... Even though my SB has the digital, as well as the capability of doing 5.1 output, I havent done it yet... ( not really interested, I have the audio ( 2 chnl ) going external to a theater amp ). What I ( mostly ) cared about, is the recording capabilities, and was the reason I got the SB, and no sound on the motherboard, in the first place.

alsaconf does a lot of stuff, when you run it, and, it appears, alsa is blind, pretty much, without running it...

I am just glad I could help,
Ms. Cuddles