[SOLVED] Re: stereo on mp3 playback

[andy <geek_show@dsl.pipex.com>]

Florian Kulzer wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 07, 2007 at 18:08:10 +0100, andy wrote:
>   
> > Florian Kulzer wrote:
> >     
> > > On Sun, Oct 07, 2007 at 15:21:50 +0100, andy wrote:
> > >       
>
> [ snip: problems with stereo playback of mp3 files ]
>
>   
> > > The fact that direct CD playback is in stereo does not necessarily mean
> > > that ALSA is correctly configured for stereo playback of sound files. 
> > > A better test is:
> > >
> > > speaker-test -t sine -c2
> > >
> > > This command should produce a (rather boring) sine wave output which
> > > switches between left and right channel every few seconds. Does that
> > > work?
> > >
> > >       
> > Thanks for the idea. Left front does not work - which is the speaker that 
> > is non-responsive when playing mp3s. I wonder if this is due to the new 
> > kernel upgrade recently: 2.6.22-2-686
> >     
>
> It is possible that a module upgrade introduced a regression. Did the
> stereo playback of mp3 files work before, or did you only listen to CD
> playback up to now?
>
> In any case, I think you should first check the alsa mixer settings.
> Post the output of:
>
> amixer | egrep '^( .*Left|[^ ])' 
>
>   
Hi

Yes, the mp3s did play in stereo before. In any event, I rebooted and 
while the machine was shutting down, I heard a "pop" sound from the left 
speaker and upon reboot all is well.

I don't know what happened, but suspect that it was perhaps a module not 
loading properly in the kernel.

I appreciate that rebooting is not the most elegant solution, nor even 
the most practical, so this thread will be useful to keep just in case. 
What would I be looking for in the output of

amixer | egrep '^( .*Left|[^ ])'

just so that I can keep this in mind for future reference if there is a 
recurrence?

Thanks Florian.

Andy

--

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"