[gentoo-user] Logitech WebCam Pro 9000 and sound card

[gentoo-user] Logitech WebCam Pro 9000 and sound card

[Dmitry S. Makovey]

Hi everybody,

I have just bought Logitech WebCam Pro 9000 and much to my suprise
things pretty much worked out of the box... almost. As I have discovered
- even though video is working flawlessly, my audio has gone AWOL. No
matter how many goats and virgins I have sacrificed to the gods of
Google - can not find an answer. Am I missing something obvious? As a
stop-gap measure I'm trying to rebuild my kernel without USB sound
support, but it would be nice to not resort to such drastic measures.

Re: [gentoo-user] Logitech WebCam Pro 9000 and sound card

[Paul Hartman]

2010/3/4 Dmitry S. Makovey <dimon@makovey.net>:
> Hi everybody,
>
> I have just bought Logitech WebCam Pro 9000 and much to my suprise
> things pretty much worked out of the box... almost. As I have discovered
> - even though video is working flawlessly, my audio has gone AWOL. No
> matter how many goats and virgins I have sacrificed to the gods of
> Google - can not find an answer. Am I missing something obvious? As a
> stop-gap measure I'm trying to rebuild my kernel without USB sound
> support, but it would be nice to not resort to such drastic measures.

I have the same webcam. My work-around is to unplug the webcam before
you reboot. Real fix would be set up alsa so it knows the proper order
of soundcards... I've never been able to get it to do that, though, so
I just unplug webcam until I want to use it. If someone else has
figured out how, I'd be happy to hear it too.

Re: [gentoo-user] Logitech WebCam Pro 9000 and sound card

[Dmitry Makovey]

On 03/04/2010 08:37 AM, Paul Hartman wrote:
> 2010/3/4 Dmitry S. Makovey <dimon@makovey.net>:
>   
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> I have just bought Logitech WebCam Pro 9000 and much to my suprise
>> things pretty much worked out of the box... almost. As I have discovered
>> - even though video is working flawlessly, my audio has gone AWOL.
> I have the same webcam. My work-around is to unplug the webcam before
> you reboot. Real fix would be set up alsa so it knows the proper order
> of soundcards... I've never been able to get it to do that, though, so
> I just unplug webcam until I want to use it. If someone else has
> figured out how, I'd be happy to hear it too.
>   
well I've figured it out half-way (based on
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/MultipleCards )

alias char-major-116 snd
alias char-major-14 soundcore

options snd major=116 cards_limit=4

alias /dev/mixer snd-mixer-oss
alias /dev/dsp snd-pcm-oss
alias /dev/midi snd-seq-oss

alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-osshree
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel index=0

alias snd-card-1 snd-usb-audio
alias sound-slot-1 snd-usb-audio
options snd-usb-audio index=1
options snd slots=snd-hda-intel,snd-usb-audio

Now my problem is that the only control ALSA shows for my built-in
"hda-intel" is "Master" with no sub-channles available. Anybody
knowledgeable enough to suggest where is the problem?

Re: [gentoo-user] Logitech WebCam Pro 9000 and sound card

[Paul Hartman]

2010/3/5 Dmitry Makovey <mldimon@makovey.net>:
> On 03/04/2010 08:37 AM, Paul Hartman wrote:
>> 2010/3/4 Dmitry S. Makovey <dimon@makovey.net>:
>>
>>> Hi everybody,
>>>
>>> I have just bought Logitech WebCam Pro 9000 and much to my suprise
>>> things pretty much worked out of the box... almost. As I have discovered
>>> - even though video is working flawlessly, my audio has gone AWOL.
>> I have the same webcam. My work-around is to unplug the webcam before
>> you reboot. Real fix would be set up alsa so it knows the proper order
>> of soundcards... I've never been able to get it to do that, though, so
>> I just unplug webcam until I want to use it. If someone else has
>> figured out how, I'd be happy to hear it too.
>>
> well I've figured it out half-way (based on
> http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/MultipleCards )
>
> alias char-major-116 snd
> alias char-major-14 soundcore
>
> options snd major=116 cards_limit=4
>
> alias /dev/mixer snd-mixer-oss
> alias /dev/dsp snd-pcm-oss
> alias /dev/midi snd-seq-oss
>
> alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
> alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
> alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
> alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
> alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-osshree
> alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
> alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel
> options snd-hda-intel index=0
>
> alias snd-card-1 snd-usb-audio
> alias sound-slot-1 snd-usb-audio
> options snd-usb-audio index=1
> options snd slots=snd-hda-intel,snd-usb-audio
>
> Now my problem is that the only control ALSA shows for my built-in
> "hda-intel" is "Master" with no sub-channles available. Anybody
> knowledgeable enough to suggest where is the problem?

To make ALSA show the proper controls for my sound card I had to tell
it which model I'm using /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf:

options snd-hda-intel model=6stack-dig

Look in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/sound/alsa/HD-Audio-Models.txt to
see the list of models. Hopefully then it will show things appropriate
to yours.

Re: [gentoo-user] Logitech WebCam Pro 9000 and sound card [SOLVED?]

[Dmitry Makovey]

For completeness here's what I have ended up with:

/etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf :

alias /dev/mixer snd-mixer-oss
alias /dev/dsp snd-pcm-oss
alias /dev/midi snd-seq-oss

options snd cards_limit=4 slots=snd-hda-intel,snd-hda-intel,snd-usb-audio

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd-card-0 enable=1 model=6stack-dig

now as it turns out that sandwich of a sound system we're expected to
run currently has more than one weak point. So I have learned that ALSA
was only part of my problem, and I got it working just fine with the
above config, now pulseaudio and phonon were two other areas where I
didn't expect to struggle but I did!

In the end, after spending some hours reading bulks of documents on
ALSA, pulseaudio and phonon and noticing that in KDE-4.3.5 my control
panel was showing not the stuff that documentation for abovementioned
pieces suggests, I killed pulseaudio daemon, then restarted it back from
command line and... lo-and-behold I've got "PulseAudio Sound Server" in
the list of available output devices. Here's what I've done:

in my home directory

$ cat .kde4/Autostart/pulseaudio.sh
#!/bin/sh

/usr/bin/pulseaudio --kill
/usr/bin/pulseaudio --start -D

now things are "singing" again. Doesn't look like I'm getting both ALSA
and PulseAudio, but that's OK - so far it seems like PulseAudio picks
the right sinks/sources.

I am not exactly sure why do I need to kill pulseaudio and restart it
again - but it works. Anybody with a better insight please correct me.