Re: ALSA devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

[Mark Neidorff <mark@neidorff.com>]

On Sunday 15 February 2009 11:25 am, T o n g wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> My recent upgrade caused my sound card not working any more. Checking back
> at my packages version log, the only related upgrade is that
> alsa-base_1.0.17.dfsg-2 is upgraded to alsa-base_1.0.17.dfsg-4.
> The rest are still the same:
>

{snip}

(putting on flame proof suit)

I've run into sound problems like this, and would like to know if I just don't 
know where to go for the solution.  ALSA is very good at what it does. But, 
unlike servers that I have to tweak and monitor on a regular basis, ALSA is 
in (or "should be in" ) the category of set it up, and it works and its done. 
My recent experience was:

The sound chip on my motherboard was not supported in ALSA.  Reasonable, I 
found an old well supported sound card and put that in.  Now that the well 
supported sound card is installed, and the drivers are installed, etc., 
getting the card to the right levels, and "connecting" the software so that 
sound coming into the sound card could be listened to or recorded was a 
matter or trial and error, and error and error and error. The best advice I 
got was go into alsamixer and try various settings until something works for 
you. Such things as "Line" "Line in" "Line 1" "Line 2" "ICE958 In Monitor", 
etc. etc. etc. aren't helpful. Sure, if I do this every day (or week) I'd 
know what to do, but when it is once in a great while???

I'd love to see a graphical front end to the sound system where there is a 
CLEARLY labeled representation of the physical card's inputs and outputs that 
can be click/dragged to appropriately CEARLY labeled software inputs, to 
CLEARLY labeled outputs.

Is there a solution to configuring sound?  If not, where is the proper place 
to ask for one?

Thanks,

Mark