Re: sound mixer cannot find audio devices after rebooting with USB headset
On Thursday 15 January 2009 20:39, H.S. wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Debian Lenny and running KDE, I am using an audio card listed as:
> 02:0c.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI (rev 02)
>
> and it works fine.
>
> However, if I plug in a headset to the USB port of the computer
> (Microsoft LX-3000 in this case, though I don't think it matters) and
> reboot the computer with the headset still plugged in, Debian fails to
> detect my audio card. I have the sound mixer applet in the panel to
> control the volume and stuff. But that applet does not see any audio
> device at all. It keeps showing "Select Mixer", but upon clicking on it,
> it shows no choices to select from.
>
> If I reboot the computer after unplugging the USB headset, all is well
> again.
>
> Basically, the sound system fscks up along with the sound mixed applet
> if I start the computer with the USB headset still plugged in.
>
> Am I missing something here? Or is there actually a problem and it is
> not supposed to be like this? Should I file a bug?
>
> I have kmix 4:3.5.9-2 installed on this updated Lenny machine.
>
> Thanks.
Hi.
Try adding the following line to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base
options snd-usb-audio index=1
That assumes that your soundcard is card0, and no other cards are using slot1.
The USB starts early in the boot process, and from personal experience with my
usb midi keyboard, which was wrongly read as an audio device, and set as
card0, resulting in the actual soundcard not being able to use slot0, which
it was asigned to.
Adding the line above fixes it for me, and maybe for you too.
Before doing that, and just for a test, try running the command below.
cat /proc/asound/cards
You may well see your headset there as card0, but as your soundcard needs to
be set as card0, this explains why you have no sounds.
You may also find that running alsamixer on the CLI (Konsole) shows a control,
but just for the headset.
This has been a long standing problem with USB devices. Some distro's handle
it better than others, but I've had to deal with it since Fedora core 1 in
2003.
All the best, and I hope the suggestion fixes your problem.
Nigel.
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