No sound after Pulseaudio update in Fedora 11 with M-Audio Delta 66

[nils06]

After having a lot of problems with my m-audio card due to pulseaudio in F10, I decided to install F11 (x86_64) as I did have correct sound with pulseaudio on an F11 live USB installation. At my suprise I found out that there was no sound at all after having installed the latest F11 updates. Actually the m-audio device does no longer exist in the PA Volume Control's Output Device tab.

After reverting each every pulseaudio-*.rpm package to the F11 release version (by using rpm -e --nodeps) I found out that the pulseaudio-0.9.15-14.fc11.x86_64 broke my audio.

pulseaudio-0.9.15-11.fc11.x86_64 -> m-audio output device exists in PA, sound from m-audio OK.
pulseaudio-0.9.15-14.fc11.x86_64 -> No m-audio output device in PA, no sound from m-audio!

What I don't get is that when things get broken, I usually see a bug-fix update very soon afterwards but Pulseaudio has given me headache for years and seems to never get fixed. Pulseaudio is probably a very good sound server system when it works, but it never does for me. Or am I the only one using a Delta card on Fedora?

These are my two sound devices:

$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: M66 [M Audio Delta 66], device 0: ICE1712 multi [ICE1712 multi]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC885 Analog [ALC885 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC885 Digital [ALC885 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

First I thought that I might get my m-audio card back in PA by tweaking the config files but I have no idea of how to do that or if this is possible. Finally I found a better solution:

# yum erase pulseaudio

You can't remove pulseaudio-libs (too many dependencies) but you do can remove pulseaudio.

Then you just move up your m-audio delta device in the KDE Multimedia settings and edit /etc/modprobe.conf to get a fixed sound-card order at boot time. With my cards:

alias snd-card-0 snd_ice1712
options snd-card-0 index=0
options snd_ice1712 index=0
alias snd-card-1 snd_hda_intel
options snd-card-1 index=1
options snd_hda_intel index=1
alias snd-card-2 snd-usb-audio
options snd-card-2 index=2
options snd-usb-audio index=2

Sound is back!

Later on I installed jack (for music production, Ardour, etc.) and when starting up jackd with qjackctl I didn't have any midi!

"Could not open ALSA sequencer as a client. ALSA MIDI patchbay will be not available."

Apparently you need to un-comment the line enabling MIDI in ALSA in /etc/modprobe.d/dist-oss.conf.

And this is the reason for why this line is commented out:

# This has been disabled in F11 onwards because it can interfere with the
# PulseAudio sound service (a legacy OSS application can prevent PulseAudio
# applications from playing sound by preventing PulseAudio from (re-)opening
# the sound device). To re-enable support, un-comment the following line:


When will Pulseaudio stop create problem?!

[richjoh]

I have a delta 410 soundcard, running FC 11. I remove Pulse Audio but still have no sound. I haven't had sound working since Fedora 7. This really sucks.

Any suggestion is appreciated...

[nils06]

richjoh, run envy24control and see if you have any output when you try playing sounds. If you don't have it installed, I think it's in the alsa-tools package (yum install alsa-tools).

What's your output from "aplay -l" and "aplay -L"?

[richjoh]

I reinstalled Pulse Audio (since it did not fix my problem).

I pop in a music CD and no sound from the envy24 controls LED indicator (I change a few slider but no sound indicated on the slider or out of my speakers).

[root@localhost ~]# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 1: M410 [M Audio Delta 410], device 0: ICE1712 multi [ICE1712 multi]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

[root@localhost ~]# aplay -L
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
default:CARD=M410
    M Audio Delta 410, ICE1712 multi
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=M410,DEV=0
    M Audio Delta 410, ICE1712 multi
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=M410,DEV=0
    M Audio Delta 410, ICE1712 multi
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=M410,DEV=0
    M Audio Delta 410, ICE1712 multi
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=M410,DEV=0
    M Audio Delta 410, ICE1712 multi
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=M410,DEV=0
    M Audio Delta 410, ICE1712 multi
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
iec958:CARD=M410,DEV=0
    M Audio Delta 410, ICE1712 multi
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

[nils06]

In your envy24control, do you have your DAC's (Analog Volume tab) at their max levels?

[richjoh]

I put in a muisc CD hit play andI put all Envy24 Analog Volume levels to 255. The is no sound and no LED indication of sound.

[nils06]

Make sure that your CD player (physical and soft player) is sending the data through the sound card and not just using the analog output cable.

Unfortunately I can't help you if you re-installed PulseAudio, because with PulseAudio I have no sound on my system.

I'm playing CDs with my DVD reader and for example Amarok or KsCD. It works just fine. Actually my sound works great now with ALSA dmix after having done as described in this thread. I just had a problem with dmix and phonon (KDE Multimedia) but I found a solution described in the second part of this thread:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=229364

Hope you'll get your sound back soon, but I wouldn't put too much hope in a pulseaudio solution.

[richjoh]

OK, removed PulseAudio. No sound though, no changes with LEDs. All controls are up. My sound works perfectly in Windows XP, I'm sure the hardware is setup correctly.

[socratien]

Hi
I'm interesting by a solution without pulseaudio too because my embedded microphone doesn't work although sound is goo with audacious for instance
when I run envy24control, I get the following error : No ICE1712 cards found
any help please?

[nils06]

OK. I'm not an expert but I will try to make it work out of my own experience.

First of all, make sure that your soundcard isn't blocked by any application. Not sure how to verify that but just close all applications. Then start from the very basics: Try to find a *.wav file with your soundcard's settings sample rate (because I think by default ALSA doesn't do any sample rate conversion, because if I run for example "aplay -D plug:hw:0 /usr/share/sounds/KDE-Sys-Log-In.ogg", I just have a lot of noise). Also I don't understand why your soundcard is "card 1". I thought the first card always is "card 0". So try this:

aplay -D plug:hw:1 yourfile.wav

If that doesn't work, just try anything (that's what I do), like:
aplay -D hw:1 yourfile.wav
aplay -D hw:1,0 yourfile.wav
aplay -D plug:hw:0 yourfile.wav
aplay -D plug:dmix yourfile.wav
etc.

If you get sound or other output than "audio open error: No such device", for example "Sample format non available" then there is hope.

Now if you get some sound, try for example xmms and configure Options->Preferences->Output Plugin (ALSA)->Configure to set that device and try to play an mp3 file.

I don't know if you use Gnome or KDE. If you use KDE, check out Computer->System Settings->Multimedia->Device Preference->Audio Output->Music. If you find your card, put it on top and try play any system sounds or any output from Amarok (close other applications before that). But attention, this will block your card. You need to apply the dmix solution described in link above to enable multiple streams.

Let me know the results from these tests and we go on from there.

[nils06]

socratien,

Are you you sure you have a ICE1712 chip or something alike it in your soundcard?

Because envy24control just works for those cards. Check your "aplay -l" output.

[socratien]

thank you nils06
In fact, play audio files with sound works, for instance I use audacious, my problem is to record sounds
with the skype test or the sound recorder fedora application, it doesn't work
For infomation, no command you give with aplay has worked

[nils06]

socratien,

Actually the test commands were intended for richjoh. About your recording problems, I'm afraid that I can't help you that much as I probably don't have the same soundcard as you. The only thing I can think of is to check if you can set the analog input volume to the A/D converters to make sure they're all up. Run alsamixer and see if you have any ADC faders in there. Also check that all inputs are up and unmuted.

[socratien]

hi Nils06
with alsamixer and by changing the card, I found the input source was Mic instead of front MIC
With that change, the record works but the sound is awful
any other suggestion to check the quality of the sound, please?