ALSA mystery
I have recently had to replace my old Nvidia graphics card so I got a:
GeForce GT730
soon as I did this and a few kernel upgrades later (currently)
Linux 4.2.0-1-amd64
my sound card listed in lspci:
Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CMI8788 [Oxygen HD Audio]
(that's the driver from my Xonar D1 sound card)
was replaced with these two entries in the alsa mixer:
IEC958 and IEC958 1
these two are not muted (green speakers) and IEC958 1 is the only one that works in
the sense it can be muted and un-muted ALSA Mixer keyboard command but there's no
keyboard volume slider control (up down) and no volume shown in IEC958 1
here's some info:
/proc/asound/cards
0 [NVidia ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
HDA NVidia at 0xfbdfc000 irq 16
/etc/asound.conf
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm {
type hw
HDMI 0
device 3
}
}
(a script I found online and modified card 0 for HDMI 0)
# service alsa-utils start
Failed to start alsa-utils.service: Unit alsa-utils.service is masked.
don't know what this means
# alsactl init
alsactl: sysfs_init:48: sysfs path '/sys' is invalid
Found hardware: "HDA-Intel" "Nvidia GPU 51 HDMI/DP"
"HDA:10de0051,196e1119,00100100" "0x196e" "0x1119"
Hardware is initialized using a generic method
not sure about this either
# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
The mystery:
If I open the VLC media player and select the following audio device:
HDA Nvidia HDMI 1 HDMI Audio Output
among the list of 'available' audio devices I get sound from my GeForce GT730
using an HDMI cable connected to the back of a Sony TV. (my only HDMI input
monitor) So there's sound in VLC and that's good but no sound from the Spotify
client or web browsers.
why do you think there's no volume available in the operating device (IEC958 1)
in the ALSA Mixer? Normally the keyboard command (up down keys) would raise
or lower these sliders to indicate volume. This detail might indicate why there's
no sound in the Spotify client or web browsers, but if that's so why is there sound
in VLC?
although I am getting sound from the Audio side of my GeForce GT730 GPU why do
you think there is incomplete utilization of the options available in the ALSA
Mixer?
The VLC player lists the contents of #aplay -L for all audio devices found, where
in ALSA can I list this one that works, because I thought it was already listed
in /etc/asound.conf (card 0 device 3) this corresponds to the listing in #aplay -l
(HDMI 0 device 3)
--
CK
Reply to: