Getting Sound working in BL

tknomanzr · 2015-10-13 14:37:44

As you may have noticed, we get frequent help requests on how to get sound working in BunsenLabs. There are some back end issues that I have discovered that are preventing automatic discovery and setup of sound at this time. You can read the details of that discussion here if it interests you.

This walkthrough is more aimed at getting your sound up and running in the interim, while the dev team works on the issues. So you've booted up into your shiny new BunsenLabs and have discovered that you have no sound. Here is what to do in that case:

1) Check to make sure your sound card is detected by the kernel and that you have sound drivers loaded. You can do that with these two commands respectively:

lspci | grep Audio
lsmod

[b]Edit HoaS Suggests this approach for lspci[/b]
lspci -k|grep -A2 Audio

2) Once you have determined that you do indeed have proper hardware support for your sound, you will need to check the software side.
First, issue the command 'aplay -l' and look at the devices it lists. Here is an example of mine:

tknomanzr@wtfbox-bl:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: CA0132 Analog [CA0132 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: CA0132 Digital [CA0132 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 3 [HDMI 3]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

As you can see, you are likely to have a list with an Analog out, a Digital out and one or more HDMI outs. Let me explain what each of these means in turn:

Analog out: your typical pc to speaker connection. Usually you wil have a green plug that plugs into the back of your pc that hooks your speakers up.
Digital Out: Not often used in typical usage scenarios, but commonly used by audio professionals when patching sound, etc.
HDMI out: Usually either a tv or HDMI capable monitor with built-in sound.

Once you have figured out which sound connections you need, usually Analog, you will need to do some editing in ~/.config/volti/config. In this section, you will see a card_index directive. This should be card_index = 0 as this is the default that alsa specifies. We need to change that to match the output device you desire from 'aplay -l'. If you look above, at my example, you will see something like this:

card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
  Subdevices: 1/1

The device number is the number we are interested in. Set the card_index to be that number in ~/.config/volti/config
Here is an example of mine. As you can see, my analog out is at card_index = 0. Note: This actually means that volti would work out of the box on this hardware. YMMV.

[card-0]
control = Master
mask_lock = 0
mask_control = 33554431

[global]
mixer_show_values = 1
scale_increment = 1.0
card_index = 0
icon_theme = Faenza
scale_show_value = 0
mixer = pavucontrol
show_tooltip = 1
notify_position = 0
keys = 0
toggle = mute
mixer_internal = 0
notify_body = <span font_desc="14" weight="bold">{volume}</span>
	<small>{card}</small>
	<small>{mixer}</small>
keys_backend = xlib
run_in_terminal = 0
notify_timeout = 2.0
show_notify = 0

[card-1]
mask_lock = 0

Now it is time to test it. from the terminal run volti like this:

volti &

If you do not get an error, your volti icon should pop up on your tint2 taskbar. If it does not, you will need to review 'aplay -l' and select another sound device.

3) As a final bit, I would recommend you go ahead and create a file at /etc/asound.conf as root with the following:

pcm.!default {
    type pulse
    # If defaults.namehint.showall is set to off in alsa.conf, then this is
    # necessary to make this pcm show up in the list returned by
    # snd_device_name_hint or aplay -L
    hint.description "Default Audio Device"
}
ctl.!default {
    type pulse
}
pcm.pulse {
    type pulse
}

ctl.pulse {
    type pulse
}

This bit will instruct alsa to allow pulseaudio to handle your sound device connections, which should, hopefully, stop problems with sound not switching outputs when you unplug headphones, etc.

If you have questions relating to your individual sound setup, you can respond here and I or someone else will do our best to help you with your issue. If you have technical information pertaining to sound setup, please post that info here so that we can keep it all grouped together.

Last edited by damo (2015-10-21 13:57:42)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2015-10-13 18:52:57

tknomanzr wrote:

1.) Check to make sure your sound card is detected by the kernel and that you have sound drivers loaded. You can do that with these two command respectively:
lspci | grep Audio
lsmod
You may need to search around with lsmod as I am not sure I can come up with a grep statement that will universally filter all the sound modules out for you.

To determine the kernel driver(s) in use for the audio system, look at the output of:

lspci -k|grep -A2 Audio

hhh · 2015-10-13 19:11:54

@tknomanzr, thanks for putting this together, it's appreciated!

Sector11 · 2015-10-13 20:50:28

@ tknomanzr

Hey, thanks ... Love your explanations of things. Things I didn't know before reading.
@ HoaS - that an good one too - a keeper.

roger72 · 2015-10-14 04:40:56

Hi there

I was also facing the problem, that Volti did not start, resulting in that there was no speaker icon in the sys tray and that I had no sound on line out.
My finding was, that HDMI sound got assigned with card_index=0 and analog sound always got card_index=1. Volti therefore did not start, sound was per default played on the HDMI output.

I while searching the net, I stumbled over the follwoing: link

Accordingly I created a file sound.conf in /etc/modprobe.d/ with the follwoing entries:

#	PCH
options snd-hda-intel index=0 model=auto vid=8086 pid=8c20
#	HDMI
options snd-hda-intel index=1 model=auto vid=8086 pid=0c0c

vid and pid I worked out with:

lspci -nn |grep -i audio

That did the trick for me, Volit starts now and sound is now working as expected.

hhh · 2015-10-14 14:35:01

That's great feedback, thanks Roger!

zv_odd · 2015-10-27 13:21:20

I've got an Astro A50 usb wireless headset, trying to get that working.
In my case I needed to run `lsusb -t |grep -i audio` to find my audio device (yes --tree, because its attached through usb hub and doesn't show up otherwise).

            |__ Port 4: Dev 6, If 0, Class=Audio, Driver=snd-usb-audio, 12M
            |__ Port 4: Dev 6, If 1, Class=Audio, Driver=snd-usb-audio, 12M
            |__ Port 4: Dev 6, If 2, Class=Audio, Driver=snd-usb-audio, 12M

So far I've figured out what my card number is , but I'm still struggling getting volti to work.

user@cruncher:~$ volti
[alsactrl.py:__init__:41] can't open Master control for card HDMI, trying to select first available mixer channel

[alsactrl.py:__init__:49] can't open first available control for card HDMI
error: list index out of range
Xlib.protocol.request.QueryExtension
X protocol error:
<class 'Xlib.error.BadAccess'>: code = 10, resource_id = 705, sequence_number = 10, major_opcode = 33, minor_opcode = 0
X protocol error:
<class 'Xlib.error.BadAccess'>: code = 10, resource_id = 705, sequence_number = 11, major_opcode = 33, minor_opcode = 0
X protocol error:
<class 'Xlib.error.BadAccess'>: code = 10, resource_id = 705, sequence_number = 12, major_opcode = 33, minor_opcode = 0
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/volti", line 53, in <module>
    volti = main.VolumeTray()
  File "/usr/lib/volti/volti/main.py", line 124, in __init__
    self.watchid = gobject.io_add_watch(fd, eventmask, self.update)
TypeError: an integer is required

I think I need todo one or both of these:

# ATI GPU HDMI
blacklist snd_hda_codec_hdmi
# Intel onboard HDMI
blacklist snd_hda_intel

tknomanzr · 2015-10-30 04:39:31

Sorry it has taken me awhile to respond to the above request. I was busy doing some research and testing. Would you mind installing pasystray and help me test out whether it will resolve your issue with USB sound? It is in the debian repos so:

sudo apt install pavucontrol
sudo apt install pasystray
pasystray &

Pasystray also comes with a number of suggests. You can install them or not. However, if you choose not too, several menu entries will apear grayed out.

Here is the debian entry for pasystray

At the bottom, you will see the list of suggested packages. I would be interested in seeing if this volume applet will solve usb issues. Atm, I have no way to test usb sound hardware. If it appears to run correctly, you can edit ~/.config/openbox/autostart and replace the entry for volti with pasystray and it will run at bootup.

sm55br · 2015-11-23 18:19:09

But HOW (what commands to use) can I open the volti configuration file?

damo · 2015-11-23 18:26:21

sm55br wrote:

But HOW (what commands to use) can I open the volti configuration file?

Open `~/.config/volti/config` with your text editor.

NB you can find all files with "volti" in the name with Catfish filesearcher, or in a terminal you can do:
First update the `locate` database (if there have been changes since your last search) with:

sudo updatedb

Then search with

locate volti

Also you may want to read up on how to use the `find` command in a terminal.

kabotage · 2015-12-07 10:07:17

I want to add on clean install of BL then after update/upgrade, the system does not have an audio. I check all the missing link, the audio was muted on the pavucontrol. I also do not have a /etc/asound.conf

Additional info http://pastebin.com/B43PutUf

Audio works fine. Thanks!

damo · 2015-12-07 13:20:48

kabotage wrote:

I want to add on clean install of BL then after update/upgrade, the system does not have an audio. I check all the missing link, the audio was muted on the pavucontrol. I also do not have a /etc/asound.conf
Additional info http://pastebin.com/B43PutUf
Audio works fine. Thanks!

Is this a help request? If so, could you open a new thread about it please, because this thread is meant to be a HowTo and not for individual issues.

PS you don't generally need pastebin unless there is a LOT of output; use [ code ] tags.

kabotage · 2015-12-07 23:47:48

damo wrote:

Is this a help request? If so, could you open a new thread about it please, because this thread is meant to be a HowTo and not for individual issues.
PS you don't generally need pastebin unless there is a LOT of output; use [ code ] tags.

I do understand that damo. Just adding info about it since I also have encountered the issue after a clean install so others can see this as well. My audio works fine. Thanks!

damo · 2015-12-07 23:52:12

^ Ah, OK. No problem.

It wasn't very clear to me, sorry

johanv · 2016-01-07 08:34:34

Hi,

Reconfiguring volti, like tknomanzr suggested, made volti start, but although I could move volti's sliders up and down, there was still no sound.

I fixed it running pavucontrol. It showed two output devices, HDMI and analog, but the volume control sliders of the analog device were grayed out.

Clicking on the mute icon fixed this. The mute icon seems a little broken, because it looks the same if the device is muted or not. But clicking it toggles the volume sliders; if they are not grayed, there is sound.

colejones · 2016-01-08 12:52:37

tknomanzr wrote:

Sorry it has taken me awhile to respond to the above request. I was busy doing some research and testing. Would you mind installing pasystray and help me test out whether it will resolve your issue with USB sound? It is in the debian repos so:
sudo apt install pavucontrol
sudo apt install pasystray
pasystray &
Pasystray also comes with a number of suggests. You can install them or not. However, if you choose not too, several menu entries will apear grayed out.
Here is the debian entry for pasystray
At the bottom, you will see the list of suggested packages. I would be interested in seeing if this volume applet will solve usb issues. Atm, I have no way to test usb sound hardware. If it appears to run correctly, you can edit ~/.config/openbox/autostart and replace the entry for volti with pasystray and it will run at bootup.

johanv wrote:

Hi,
Reconfiguring volti, like tknomanzr suggested, made volti start, but although I could move volti's sliders up and down, there was still no sound.
I fixed it running pavucontrol. It showed two output devices, HDMI and analog, but the volume control sliders of the analog device were grayed out.
Clicking on the mute icon fixed this. The mute icon seems a little broken, because it looks the same if the device is muted or not. But clicking it toggles the volume sliders; if they are not grayed, there is sound.

Thanks tknomanzr and johanv...i faced a similar problem and haven't had a chance to try all the various steps that you guys have very clearly outlined above. Will give it a shot asap. I appreciate this is not a thread for individual issues, and wanted to mention my case as well to ID the helpful nature of this thread. Thanks guys!

hhh · 2016-07-04 02:24:11

Unstickying this, it's getting crufty. If anyone objects, just say so.

ibilata_bingbingbing · 2016-07-16 10:05:44

tknomanzr wrote:

As you can see, you are likely to have a list with an Analog out, a Digital out and one or more HDMI outs. Let me explain what each of these means in turn:

Hi!

with

lspci | grep Audio

I get "Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)"

but with

aplay -l

I get "no soundcards found"

I'll search around, but it might be good to update the tutorial for the case where nothing comes up, and how to make it...

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-07-16 10:23:11

Hello!

ibilata_bingbingbing wrote:

with
lspci | grep Audio
I get "Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)"

That device should be supported.

Try running this command:

sudo update-pciids

Then please post the full output of these commands:

lspci -knn | grep -iA2 audio
cat /proc/asound/cards

ibilata_bingbingbing · 2016-07-16 11:21:17

Thanks for the quick answer.

lspci -knn | grep -iA2 audio

00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller [8086:1e20] (rev 04)
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0742]
	Kernel driver in use: oss_hdaudio
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 [8086:1e10] (rev c4)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport8

cat /proc/asound/cards

cat: /proc/asound/cards: No such file or directory

I just checked out "/proc" and "/asound" isn't there. But "/opensound" is...

In my first couple of hours I did some footling because the sound wasn't working... and probably installed opensound, which uninstalled asound? but opensound can't find the hardware?

#1 2015-10-13 14:37:44

Getting Sound working in BL

#2 2015-10-13 18:52:57

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#3 2015-10-13 19:11:54

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#4 2015-10-13 20:50:28

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#5 2015-10-14 04:40:56

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#6 2015-10-14 14:35:01

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#7 2015-10-27 13:21:20

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#8 2015-10-30 04:39:31

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#9 2015-11-23 18:19:09

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#10 2015-11-23 18:26:21

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#11 2015-12-07 10:07:17

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#12 2015-12-07 13:20:48

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#13 2015-12-07 23:47:48

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#14 2015-12-07 23:52:12

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#15 2016-01-07 08:34:34

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#16 2016-01-08 12:52:37

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#17 2016-07-04 02:24:11

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#18 2016-07-16 10:05:44

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#19 2016-07-16 10:23:11

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

#20 2016-07-16 11:21:17

Re: Getting Sound working in BL

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