[Lancaster] Problem recording sound

Wed Jan 20 14:41:37 UTC 2010

Hi Guys!

Further to my previous comments about problems with a duff on-board sound 
card, I thought that others might find details of my progress useful.

To begin with, I've now got a brand new ASUS P5Q SE2 mobo. I simply swapped 
this in place of the older ASUS P5K SE/EPU mobo. Not difficult as the various 
on-board plugs, etc more or less matched, although some were in slightly 
different positions. I plugged in the PCI parallel port card and my PCI 
Hauppauge Win TV card.

After re-assembly, the PC booted into Debian Lenny OK and everything worked, 
except of course the on-board sound system which provided only very limited 
functionality. So to begin with I plugged in a spare PCI Sound Blaster Live! 
card which worked OK. So far, so good!

I had a look around the Internet and discovered that the VIA VT1708S sound 
system isn't yet supported out of the box in Linux distros. No big deal as 
with an extra PCI slot, I could now use the old Sound Blaster card.

The Internet provided me with some information about installing a modified 
kernel and updated alsa stuff under Debian, but so far I've not been able to 
make sense of it all. I did see a note to the effect that VT1708S is 
supported under kernel v2.26.30, but Debian is still a way back from this. 
Also alsa must be updated to v1.1.22.

Having still got SUSE Linux v11.1 installed on a second hard drive, I thought 
that I would see how this behaved with the new mobo. Again, no problems 
except for the sound system. HOWEVER, I discovered some very useful info on 
one of the SUSE forums. 
See:<http://forums.opensuse.org/hardware/laptop/421388-no-sound-asus-x5dij.html>

This provides clear, definitive, and simple instructions for downloading and 
installing a modified kernel and updated alsa stuff all as rpm files, so no 
compilation needed was needed. Just six command line instructions which could 
be cut/pasted/executed. This worked very well indeed!

I now have a fully functioning HD sound system! My aged ears aren't what they 
used to be and I'm using cheepo speakers, but output does seem to be a tad 
sweeter than with the old Soundblaster card.

So now I have a problem. Over the last few months I have got to like Debian 
Lenny, but as you guys might remember, I've used SUSE for a long time and 64 
bit SUSE v11.1 works pretty well. Presently it's running my HD sound system 
and everything else that I could run under Debian. For now, I do have a 
problem with VirtualBox, because I haven't yet installed the source code for 
the new kernel, but that should be easy to sort out.

I guess that SUSE is going to win.   ;-)

If anyone is looking for a new LGA775 mobo, I can recommend the ASUS P5Q SE2. 
I'm using it with an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 processor and 4 GB RAM (this 
mobo can handle up to 16GB of RAM), and an Nvidia GForce 9500GT graphics 
card.

Not the quickest of systems, but no slouch!  ;-)

Regards

Ken Hough

On Thursday 14 January 2010 16:04:49 Ken Hough wrote:
> Wayne, et al,
>
> WRT my problem with an on-board sound card:
>
> After a lot of testing and playing with the various channels on KMix, I'm
> now fairly sure that the sound card is duff! I have attached an image file
> of an attempt to record sound via this card using Audacity.
>
> You will see that no sound is recorded on the lower channel. That on the
> upper channel is nothing but noise. Also, you will see that there is a
> positive 'DC' (?) offset on both channels which switches on and off as I
> enable/disable the corresponding Capture channel on KMix.
>
> As I stated previously, this problem is happening under Debian on my main
> desktop PC. I have similar problems when running under Win XP.
>
> I've now run Kmix/Audicity on an old Athlon box under Debian with a
> Sounblaster Live PCI card. This works just fine, so I don't think that I'm
> missing anything relating to Debian, KMix and Audacity.
>
> I have a spare PCI sound card, but my problem mobo (ASUS P5K SE/EPU) has
> only two PCI slots which are taken up with a PCI parallel port card (no
> on-board parallel port) and a Hauppauge Win TV digital TV card.
>
> I could buy a PCI Express sound card (3 spare PCI e slots), but this
> wouldn't be cheap.
>
> SO.......I've decided to go for a replacement mobo (ASUS P5Q SE2) which
> will cost about the same as a PCI e sound card. This mobo has 3 ordinary
> PCI slots and an on-board sound card. Should the on board sound card fail,
> I would still have room for a plug-in card in the third PCI slot.
>
> Ho hum!  That's life!
>
> Ken Hough
>
> On Tuesday 12 January 2010 17:36:30 Wayne Ward wrote:
> > Yes i had the same problem and had to switch it in on the kmix -.
> > recording side another  quick test
> >
> > alsamixer from a terminal you can see if line in volumes are up and see
> > if its un-muted
> >
> > what sound card are you using..
> >
> > also did anyone find any cheap speakers for andys demo or shal we just
> > line it into a laptop ..
> >
> > regards
> > wayne
> >
> > On 12 Jan 2010, at 16:42, andy baxter wrote:
> > > Ken Hough wrote:
> > >> I hope that one  (or more?) of you guys can help me with a problem
> > >> that I'm having with my desktop Debian Lenny setup.
> > >>
> > >> I have no problems in playing wave files via the likes of 'audacity',
> > >> streaming sound off the Internet (eg Classic FM) via
> > >> Konqueror/Mplayer, and playing CDs/DVDs and digital Radio/TV via
> > >> Kaffeine.
> > >>
> > >> However,  I cannot get audacity or anything else to pick up and record
> > >> sound from any of these sound sources. I use KMix and have played with
> > >> all of the available channels.
> > >>
> > >> My old Thinkpad T42 laptop running SUSE v11.1 has no trouble in doing
> > >> this.
> > >>
> > >> What am I missing?
> > >
> > > Have you looked at the switches as well as the channel volumes in
> > > alsamixer or kmix? I know some sound cards have a switch for turning
> > > the internal mic on and off, so this might be what is missing.
> > >
> > > also, look at you /dev/snd . Mine looks like this:
> > >
> > > andy at monkey:~$ ls /dev/snd
> > > by-path  controlC0  hwC0D0  pcmC0D0c  pcmC0D0p  pcmC0D1p  seq  timer
> > >
> > > if there is an entry starting 'pcm' and ending 'c' (for capture), then
> > > you should be able to record sound from that device.
> > >
> > > andy
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Lancaster mailing list
> > > Lancaster at mailman.lug.org.uk
> > > https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/lancaster
> >
> > Wayne Ward
> >
> > www.lancasterlug.org.uk
> > wayne at lancasterlug.org.uk
> > 07957448652
> >
> > Lancaster Linux User Group.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Lancaster at mailman.lug.org.uk
> > https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/lancaster