Re: Sound in Stretch

[Joe <joe@jretrading.com>]

On Tue, 11 Sep 2018 08:53:39 -0400
Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org> wrote:

> > > does the command alsa-info give a clue?  
> > 
> > I didn't know about that one. It gives pages of stuff that look like
> > what I used to find in /proc/asound, it certainly knows all about
> > the USB device. No error messages, no suggestion as to what might be
> > missing.  
> 
> Since it's USB, the obvious next step is "lsusb".
> 
> Or, really, *any* information you can provide about this USB sound
> device would be useful at this point.
> 

OK, a bit more. After some crawling under furniture, I was able to plug
the device into my netbook, running 32-bit Stretch. It works fine
there. I did lsmod, and apart from some snd_hda_ modules for the
built-in sound, there are no modules there that aren't also in the
server. The codecs are all HDA.

Back on the server:

~$ sudo lsusb
.
.
Bus 004 Device 005: ID 0d8c:0102 C-Media Electronics, Inc. CM106 Like
Sound Device .
.

That's not on any compatibility list anywhere, but it has worked OK for
years on Wheezy on the same computer hardware. Anyway, USB is USB, and
there really shouldn't be compatibility issues for at least basic
playback. I'm not trying to record or use SPDIF.

~$ sudo lshw -C sound
  *-usb:1                   
       description: Audio device
       product: USB Sound Device
       vendor: C-Media Electronics, Inc.
       physical id: 5
       bus info: usb@4:5
       version: 0.10
       capabilities: usb-1.10 audio-control
       configuration: driver=usbhid maxpower=500mA speed=12Mbit/s

~$ sudo lsmod | grep usbhid
usbhid                 53248  0
hid                   122880  2 hid_generic,usbhid
usbcore               253952  9
usbhid,snd_usb_audio,usb_storage,ehci_hcd,ohci_pci,snd_usbmidi_lib,uas,ohci_hcd,ehci_pci

~$ sudo lsmod | grep snd
snd_usb_audio         180224  0
snd_usbmidi_lib        28672  1 snd_usb_audio
snd_hwdep              16384  1 snd_usb_audio
snd_rawmidi            32768  1 snd_usbmidi_lib
snd_seq_device         16384  1 snd_rawmidi
snd_pcm               110592  1 snd_usb_audio
snd_timer              32768  1 snd_pcm
snd                    86016  7
snd_hwdep,snd_usb_audio,snd_timer,snd_rawmidi,snd_usbmidi_lib,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm
soundcore              16384  1 snd usbcore               253952  9
usbhid,snd_usb_audio,usb_storage,ehci_hcd,ohci_pci,snd_usbmidi_lib,uas,ohci_hcd,ehci_pci

~$ speaker-test

speaker-test 1.1.3

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 1 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
ALSA lib confmisc.c:767:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function
snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory ALSA lib
confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings ALSA lib
conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned
error: No such file or directory ALSA lib
confmisc.c:1246:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name ALSA lib
conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned
error: No such file or directory ALSA lib
conf.c:5007:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or
directory ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM
default Playback open error: -2,No such file or directory

Presumably this is just a fancy way of saying that /proc/asound isn't
there.

I did the alsa-info, but that produces a really huge ream of stuff, and
I can't see any errors or warnings in it. There was a warning flashed
up for a millisecond or two during the gathering of data: 

pcilib: sysfs_read_vpd: read failed: input/output error

but I'm not sure that is relevant. There is a long list of card
capabilities produced, so there's communication going on.

-- 
Joe