Re: More Problems configuring sound card with alsa on debian

[Nigel Henry <cave.dnb2m97pp@aliceadsl.fr>]

On Wednesday 08 April 2009 14:56, Dancing Fingers wrote:
> Hi guys,
> I'm also having an ALSA problem.  I put a SoundBlaster card in my
> Lenny box.  If I run alsaconf every time I boot and everything works
> fine.   What I don't understand is why the system resets the conf
> files every time it boots?
> Thanks.
> Chris

Hi Chris.

I assume there is an onboard soundcard on the machine as well. What may be 
happening when you boot up is that both soundcards are being detected, and 
the onboard soundcard is being set as card0, and the audigy one as card1. 
Most audio apps use card0 as default, so you may find that plugging the 
speakers into the onboard soundcard (if there is one) produces sound.

To check this out, reboot, then run the following command before running 
alsaconf, and post the results.

cat /proc/asound/cards

Then run alsaconf, and set up the audigy card, then run the command above 
again, and post the results.

If what I say above is the case, and you want the audigy soundblaster to be 
set as card0 (the default), you can add a couple of lines to the bottom of: 
to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

options snd-emu10k1 index=0
options snd-???? index=1

The above is assuming that your soundblaster is using the snd-emu10k1 driver, 
but may be snd-ca0106. The snd-???? is the unknown driver for the onboard 
card (if that exists). Just change that to whatever the driver is (maybe 
snd-hda-intel, as a guess).

Now reboot, and see if you have sounds on the soundblaster (without running 
alsaconf), and run cat /proc/asound/cards again, where you should see the 
soundblaster as card0, and the onboard card as card1.

If you do have 2 soundcards you can open alsamixer on the CLI as below to 
access the controls for each card.

alsamixer -D hw:0
alsamixer -D hw:1

Would you post the output from the following, as well please.

lsmod | grep snd

All the best.

Nigel.