Distorted, tinny audio

[MALDATA]

I have a new Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop. I'm relatively new to Linux, and I'm trying to figure out the benefits. I am using Fedora Core 3, and I set it to install everything.

The audio works, kind of. The system detects the card and plays the test sound, but here's the problem... All of the audio is distorted and tinny. Everything sounds horrible. I've played with alsamixer and kmix, and nothing changes (even volume levels). I've been searching forums for days, nothing has worked. I just don't understand why I would get audio, but not clean audio.

The card is fine, I can swap out the hard drive and run Windows XP, sounds perfect.

Please help, this is preventing me from making the transition to Linux. The card is identified in Windows as a Sigmatel STAC AC97, and I think the chipset is from Intel.

Thanks...

[tejas]

Even I had a similar Problem. Open KMix and mute all the output Devices, except
A) Master
b) PCM
c) Wave
Keep the last two on as low a volume as possible.
Also, try to use the OSS audio driver.
ESPECIALLY MUTE THOSE 3D settings, thats what caused all the noise on my computer

[tejas]

On hindsight, click the Advanced check box in KMix and disable 3D stuff over there, doesn't make any difference if you just slide the levels to 0. Also, which audio program are you using? The player may have some built in effects, which make the sound distort

[MALDATA]

I actually already installed OSS. It didn't help, it just messed up how kmix and alsa work (remember, I don't know much), I'm not sure I can tell you exactly how.

KMix has only 5 sliders in the output mixer: PCM, Speaker, PCM2, IGain, and Digital1. I have no 3d settings.

None of the sliders change anything except Digital1. It has only two position, fully on and fully off. If it's off I get no sound, if it's on, I get distorted sound.

I am playing music in RealPlayer.

How do I actually get into the OSS configuration? It ran after I installed it, now I don't know how to find it again.

Thanks

[AndyGreen]

This sounds to me like your problem is that your soundcard demands 48kHz audio ONLY. A lot of recent sound hardware, including the sound on this Inspiron 5150 has this "feature".

The problem is being caused by your audioplayer sending out probably 44.1kHz audio (ie, 44100 samples per second) when the hardware insists only to accept 48000 samples per second. Therefore the interface between the generated samples and the hardware is messed up, what audio there is plays back at the wrong speed (tinny) and you are unhappy.

This can be fixed in xmms easily enough. You need to add a yum repo and install a couple of rpms.

As root, cut and paste the following into a file /etc/yum.repos.d/dag.repo

[Dag]
name=Dag
baseurl=http://apt.sw.be/fedora/3/en/$basearch/dag
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Then, as root, type

yum install xmms-mp3 xmms-crossfade

After this, run xmms and rightclick the titlebar, select Options | Preferences

Select Crossfade in the "Output Plugin" section on the first "Audio IO Plugins" tab

Click Configure under that

In the Resampling section, set Rate to 48000Hz, and Quality to "Best Sinc Interpolator".

Set Output Method to "Output Plugin".

Set Output Plugin to Alsa output plugin

Click configure under that and choose default, and your soundcard underneath.

OK out of everything and play an mp3 to feel either joy or crushing defeat.

[MALDATA]

Unfortunately, it was crushing defeat, but thanks for the help anyway.

Any other ideas? This is really frustrating.

As long as I'm posting here, how do I adjust the audio? It doesn't seem like any of the volume controls (aumix, kmix, the icon on the panel) actually DO anything. In fact, I have them all turned down to nothing and it still plays.

I appreciate the help.

[MALDATA]

I fixed the problem...

I have my laptop in a docking station, and the speakers are hooked up to that. I moved the plug to the headphone jack on the computer itself and after fiddling with some of the volume controls, it sounded perfect.

I wish I had tried that sooner.

If anyone knows why this might be the case, please let me know.

Thanks

[icedfaith]

i think andy was spot on in identifying the problem. try this. i think it will help
edit /etc/esd.conf file

here's a sample

[esd]
auto_spawn=1
spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 2 -d default
spawn_wait_ms=100
# default options are used in spawned and non-spawned mode
default_options=-r 48000


the key thing u need to add is the last line -r 48000. get back to me if this works.

[cmooring]

Hey Icedfaith,

Thankyou so much for this. I was struggling with this for a while. I had installed FC4 over the top of RH9, and all of a sudden, my sound stopped working. I managed to get it working by enabling the external amplifier in alsa-mixer. Now the sound worked, but it was horribly distorted.

I modified my /etc/esd.conf file as you suggested, and it worked a treat. One thing to note though, my spawn_options didn't have the "-d default" at the end, so I had to add that too in order for it to read the default switches. For example;

spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 2 -d default

Now I can listen to my music again. I will add your solutions to a couple of other forums that are chasing that answer too.

Thanks again, you are a champ.

Chris

[jimrolf]

All,

I've got the same problem-- RealPlayer 10 on Fedora Core 4 on a Dell latitude d610 has an awful, tinny sound. This is not a problem when I play a CD using the default CD player, only when streaming thru RealPlayer.

I tried editing the esd.conf file and it didn't change anything.

The bad news is that this is happening when i plug my speakers into the docking station. the good news is that things are ok when i plug the speakers directly into the laptop.

any ideas about how to correct the problem through the docking station?

thanks ahead of time for any thoughts...

jim