[gentoo-user] Help getting my new loudspeakers working, please!

[gentoo-user] Help getting my new loudspeakers working, please!

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Gentoo.

I've finally got around to buying a pair of new loadspeakers for my new
(as of 2024-08) PC.  The experience has not been relaxed and obvious.

I have connected the speakers up physically.  I have made the necessary
settings in the kernel configuration, rebuilt and rebooted into it.  So
far, so good.

Then I attempt to use alsamixer to unmute the speakers and, hopefully get
some sound out of them.  This is where my problems start.

alsamixer displays just one object, labelled S/PDIF in the middle of the
screen.  I don't have an S/PDIF connection, just an ordinary audio cable
with a green 3.5 mm jack plug at each end.

How do I configure alsamixer to show me appropriate things, such as
volume settings and so on.

I've tried following https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ALSA, but it is most
unhelpful.  It describes in detail a few complicated setups, presumably
for those who understand the basics and want such a setup.  It doesn't
say how to get a simple configuration, such as my own, working.

I have a /etc/asound.conf file set up, as suggested in the above doc, as:

    defaults.pcm.!card Generic
    defaults.pcm.!device 0
    defaults.pcm.!ctl Generic

..

Before I spend hours reading documentation, could some kind person
familiar with these things perhaps give me a tip to getting my speakers
working.

Setting up loudspeakers shouldn't be this difficult.

Thanks in advance for any help!

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] Help getting my new loudspeakers working, please!

[Dale]

Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hello, Gentoo.
>
> I've finally got around to buying a pair of new loadspeakers for my new
> (as of 2024-08) PC.  The experience has not been relaxed and obvious.
>
> I have connected the speakers up physically.  I have made the necessary
> settings in the kernel configuration, rebuilt and rebooted into it.  So
> far, so good.
>
> Then I attempt to use alsamixer to unmute the speakers and, hopefully get
> some sound out of them.  This is where my problems start.
>
> alsamixer displays just one object, labelled S/PDIF in the middle of the
> screen.  I don't have an S/PDIF connection, just an ordinary audio cable
> with a green 3.5 mm jack plug at each end.
>
> How do I configure alsamixer to show me appropriate things, such as
> volume settings and so on.
>
> I've tried following https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ALSA, but it is most
> unhelpful.  It describes in detail a few complicated setups, presumably
> for those who understand the basics and want such a setup.  It doesn't
> say how to get a simple configuration, such as my own, working.
>
> I have a /etc/asound.conf file set up, as suggested in the above doc, as:
>
>     defaults.pcm.!card Generic
>     defaults.pcm.!device 0
>     defaults.pcm.!ctl Generic
>
> ..
>
> Before I spend hours reading documentation, could some kind person
> familiar with these things perhaps give me a tip to getting my speakers
> working.
>
> Setting up loudspeakers shouldn't be this difficult.
>
> Thanks in advance for any help!
>

I have a similar setup.  I made my speakers from a spare set that didn't
fit my car and wasn't worth sending back.  Made a nice little box for
them.  My monitor sits on it.  :-D  Anyway, I use KDE and the new
pipewire thingy.  To be fair, pipewire does work better, mostly.  Still,
you have to unmute in alsa, kmix and all that before using pipewire. 

If the devices are not showing up, either you didn't load the modules if
you use those or didn't enable the right drivers in the kernel. 
Otherwise, they should show up.  I don't think there is any magic to
this.  It never has been for me anyway. 

Even if you don't use KDE and pipewire, it should still show up if the
right drivers are being used.  I'd double or triple check my drivers
first thing.  Using the command lspci -k might help.  Make sure
something is loaded then make sure it is the correct drivers.  If
unsure, booting media from CD/DVD/USB stick and doing a lspci -k there
should help, if sound works.  I find Knoppix works well with this. 
Every system that can have sound, has it with Knoppix. 

Hope that helps. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Help getting my new loudspeakers working, please!

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Dale.

On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 14:53:30 -0600, Dale wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > Hello, Gentoo.

> > I've finally got around to buying a pair of new loadspeakers for my new
> > (as of 2024-08) PC.  The experience has not been relaxed and obvious.

> > I have connected the speakers up physically.  I have made the necessary
> > settings in the kernel configuration, rebuilt and rebooted into it.  So
> > far, so good.

> > Then I attempt to use alsamixer to unmute the speakers and, hopefully get
> > some sound out of them.  This is where my problems start.

> > alsamixer displays just one object, labelled S/PDIF in the middle of the
> > screen.  I don't have an S/PDIF connection, just an ordinary audio cable
> > with a green 3.5 mm jack plug at each end.

> > How do I configure alsamixer to show me appropriate things, such as
> > volume settings and so on.

> > I've tried following https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ALSA, but it is most
> > unhelpful.  It describes in detail a few complicated setups, presumably
> > for those who understand the basics and want such a setup.  It doesn't
> > say how to get a simple configuration, such as my own, working.

> > I have a /etc/asound.conf file set up, as suggested in the above doc, as:

> >     defaults.pcm.!card Generic
> >     defaults.pcm.!device 0
> >     defaults.pcm.!ctl Generic

> > ..

> > Before I spend hours reading documentation, could some kind person
> > familiar with these things perhaps give me a tip to getting my speakers
> > working.

> > Setting up loudspeakers shouldn't be this difficult.

> > Thanks in advance for any help!


> I have a similar setup.  I made my speakers from a spare set that didn't
> fit my car and wasn't worth sending back.  Made a nice little box for
> them.  My monitor sits on it.  :-D  Anyway, I use KDE and the new
> pipewire thingy.  To be fair, pipewire does work better, mostly.  Still,
> you have to unmute in alsa, kmix and all that before using pipewire. 

> If the devices are not showing up, either you didn't load the modules if
> you use those or didn't enable the right drivers in the kernel. 
> Otherwise, they should show up.  I don't think there is any magic to
> this.  It never has been for me anyway. 

You're absolutely right.  I was missing CONFIG_SND_USB_AUDIO, a setting
that builds in the USB sound driver.  I'm not sure how I worked that out,
but probably somewhere on my Internet searches the concept USB sound chip
came up.  It doesn't mean a setup where you plugh the loudspeakers into a
USB socket; it's to do with the internal communication inside the chip
set, or something like that.

So now it "works".  My new speakers are fine on my old box, but on the
new one, an MSI Tomahawk board, there's a constant crackling, and a sound
something like somebody playing the bongos added in for good measure.  In
short, utterly unusable.  This seems to have been a problem with this
make of board for many months, but MSI have failed to fix it.  I can see
my still shiny new machine (from August) going back to its seller as a
guarantee case.

> Even if you don't use KDE and pipewire, it should still show up if the
> right drivers are being used.  I'd double or triple check my drivers
> first thing.  Using the command lspci -k might help.  Make sure
> something is loaded then make sure it is the correct drivers.  If
> unsure, booting media from CD/DVD/USB stick and doing a lspci -k there
> should help, if sound works.  I find Knoppix works well with this. 
> Every system that can have sound, has it with Knoppix. 

> Hope that helps. 

It did, thanks!

> Dale

> :-)  :-) 

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] Help getting my new loudspeakers working, please!

[Dale]

Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hello, Dale.
>
> On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 14:53:30 -0600, Dale wrote:
>> Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>>> Hello, Gentoo.
>>> I've finally got around to buying a pair of new loadspeakers for my new
>>> (as of 2024-08) PC.  The experience has not been relaxed and obvious.
>>> I have connected the speakers up physically.  I have made the necessary
>>> settings in the kernel configuration, rebuilt and rebooted into it.  So
>>> far, so good.
>>> Then I attempt to use alsamixer to unmute the speakers and, hopefully get
>>> some sound out of them.  This is where my problems start.
>>> alsamixer displays just one object, labelled S/PDIF in the middle of the
>>> screen.  I don't have an S/PDIF connection, just an ordinary audio cable
>>> with a green 3.5 mm jack plug at each end.
>>> How do I configure alsamixer to show me appropriate things, such as
>>> volume settings and so on.
>>> I've tried following https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ALSA, but it is most
>>> unhelpful.  It describes in detail a few complicated setups, presumably
>>> for those who understand the basics and want such a setup.  It doesn't
>>> say how to get a simple configuration, such as my own, working.
>>> I have a /etc/asound.conf file set up, as suggested in the above doc, as:
>>>     defaults.pcm.!card Generic
>>>     defaults.pcm.!device 0
>>>     defaults.pcm.!ctl Generic
>>> ..
>>> Before I spend hours reading documentation, could some kind person
>>> familiar with these things perhaps give me a tip to getting my speakers
>>> working.
>>> Setting up loudspeakers shouldn't be this difficult.
>>> Thanks in advance for any help!
>
>> I have a similar setup.  I made my speakers from a spare set that didn't
>> fit my car and wasn't worth sending back.  Made a nice little box for
>> them.  My monitor sits on it.  :-D  Anyway, I use KDE and the new
>> pipewire thingy.  To be fair, pipewire does work better, mostly.  Still,
>> you have to unmute in alsa, kmix and all that before using pipewire. 
>> If the devices are not showing up, either you didn't load the modules if
>> you use those or didn't enable the right drivers in the kernel. 
>> Otherwise, they should show up.  I don't think there is any magic to
>> this.  It never has been for me anyway. 
> You're absolutely right.  I was missing CONFIG_SND_USB_AUDIO, a setting
> that builds in the USB sound driver.  I'm not sure how I worked that out,
> but probably somewhere on my Internet searches the concept USB sound chip
> came up.  It doesn't mean a setup where you plugh the loudspeakers into a
> USB socket; it's to do with the internal communication inside the chip
> set, or something like that.
>
> So now it "works".  My new speakers are fine on my old box, but on the
> new one, an MSI Tomahawk board, there's a constant crackling, and a sound
> something like somebody playing the bongos added in for good measure.  In
> short, utterly unusable.  This seems to have been a problem with this
> make of board for many months, but MSI have failed to fix it.  I can see
> my still shiny new machine (from August) going back to its seller as a
> guarantee case.
>
>> Even if you don't use KDE and pipewire, it should still show up if the
>> right drivers are being used.  I'd double or triple check my drivers
>> first thing.  Using the command lspci -k might help.  Make sure
>> something is loaded then make sure it is the correct drivers.  If
>> unsure, booting media from CD/DVD/USB stick and doing a lspci -k there
>> should help, if sound works.  I find Knoppix works well with this. 
>> Every system that can have sound, has it with Knoppix. 
>> Hope that helps. 
> It did, thanks!
>
>> Dale
>> :-)  :-) 


Could it be two drivers that match that sound device?  One that doesn't
quite work right, crackle problem, and one that does?  I've never ran
into that but it might be worth doing some research into.  Unless your
previous searches show this is a well known mobo issue.  If it is a well
known hardware problem, then it is what it is. 

Glad to help, in some small way.  ;-)

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Help getting my new loudspeakers working, please!

[Michael]

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On Saturday 25 January 2025 15:28:49 Greenwich Mean Time Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hello, Dale.
[snip ...]

> You're absolutely right.  I was missing CONFIG_SND_USB_AUDIO, a setting
> that builds in the USB sound driver.  I'm not sure how I worked that out,
> but probably somewhere on my Internet searches the concept USB sound chip
> came up.  It doesn't mean a setup where you plugh the loudspeakers into a
> USB socket; it's to do with the internal communication inside the chip
> set, or something like that.
> 
> So now it "works".  My new speakers are fine on my old box, but on the
> new one, an MSI Tomahawk board, there's a constant crackling, and a sound
> something like somebody playing the bongos added in for good measure.  In
> short, utterly unusable.  This seems to have been a problem with this
> make of board for many months, but MSI have failed to fix it.  I can see
> my still shiny new machine (from August) going back to its seller as a
> guarantee case.

If your MSI Tomahawk MoBo comes with a Realtek alc4080 chip, then this fix may 
be applicable to solve your problem:

https://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2023-January/210407.html

HTH

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Re: [gentoo-user] Help getting my new loudspeakers working, please!

[karl]

Alan Mackenzie:
...
> Then I attempt to use alsamixer to unmute the speakers and, hopefully get
> some sound out of them.  This is where my problems start.
> 
> alsamixer displays just one object, labelled S/PDIF in the middle of the
> screen.  I don't have an S/PDIF connection, just an ordinary audio cable
> with a green 3.5 mm jack plug at each end.
...

 I have:
# aplay --list-devices
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC888 Analog [ALC888 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: ALC888 Digital [ALC888 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: Generic Digital [Generic Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: M1010LT [M Audio Delta 1010LT], device 0: ICE1712 multi [ICE1712 multi]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

And if I do alsamixer -c 1 I also get just one s/pdif in the middle of
the screen, the graphics card appearantly have one.

alsamixer -c 0 shows the motherboard interface,
alsamizer -c 2 shows the pci one.

Perhaps you have more than one interface.

///

 There is a debug tool /usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh if you install
media-sound/alsa-utils

You can possible get better help at linux-audio-user at
lists.linuxaudio.org

Regards,
/Karl Hammar

Re: [gentoo-user] Help getting my new loudspeakers working, please!

[Michael]

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On Saturday 25 January 2025 08:00:12 Greenwich Mean Time karl@aspodata.se 
wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie:
> ...
> 
> > Then I attempt to use alsamixer to unmute the speakers and, hopefully get
> > some sound out of them.  This is where my problems start.
> > 
> > alsamixer displays just one object, labelled S/PDIF in the middle of the
> > screen.  I don't have an S/PDIF connection, just an ordinary audio cable
> > with a green 3.5 mm jack plug at each end.
> 
> ...
> 
>  I have:
> # aplay --list-devices
> **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
> card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC888 Analog [ALC888 Analog]
>   Subdevices: 1/1
>   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
> card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: ALC888 Digital [ALC888 Digital]
>   Subdevices: 1/1
>   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
> card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: Generic Digital [Generic Digital]
>   Subdevices: 1/1
>   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
> card 2: M1010LT [M Audio Delta 1010LT], device 0: ICE1712 multi [ICE1712
> multi] Subdevices: 0/1
>   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
> 
> And if I do alsamixer -c 1 I also get just one s/pdif in the middle of
> the screen, the graphics card appearantly have one.
> 
> alsamixer -c 0 shows the motherboard interface,
> alsamizer -c 2 shows the pci one.
> 
> Perhaps you have more than one interface.
> 
> ///
> 
>  There is a debug tool /usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh if you install
> media-sound/alsa-utils
> 
> You can possible get better help at linux-audio-user at
> lists.linuxaudio.org
> 
> Regards,
> /Karl Hammar

Assuming kernel drivers for all your devices are configured, either in kernel 
or as loadable modules, you may have to specify the desired order in which 
different sound devices are initialised.  This is achieved by adding an option 
in /etc/asound.conf, or ~/.asoundrc, to specify which should be the default 
card/device, and/or specifying the order in which the devices are initialised 
by the driver if you only have one sound card, using a sound module option, 
e.g. this is what I have  in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf on a desktop here;

# Set this to the correct number of cards.
options snd cards_limit=2

options snd-hda-intel id=Generic_1 index=0
options snd-hda-intel id=Generic index=1
options snd-hda-intel index=1,0

See this section in the wiki page:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ALSA#Laptops_with_HDMI_audio_output

To find your cards and devices you can 'cat /proc/asound/cards', run 'aplay -
L', or press F2 and F6 in alsamixer.

Once the cards/devices have been initialised in the desired order you can use 
your alsamixer or the sound mixer of your desktop GUI to unmute the port/jack 
you connect your speakers to and adjust their volume.

You may also want to read this page to make your desktop work with pipewire/
wireplumber:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/PipeWire

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Re: [gentoo-user] Help getting my new loudspeakers working, please!

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Karl.

On Sat, Jan 25, 2025 at 09:00:12 +0100, karl@aspodata.se wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie:
> ...
> > Then I attempt to use alsamixer to unmute the speakers and, hopefully get
> > some sound out of them.  This is where my problems start.

> > alsamixer displays just one object, labelled S/PDIF in the middle of the
> > screen.  I don't have an S/PDIF connection, just an ordinary audio cable
> > with a green 3.5 mm jack plug at each end.
> ...

>  I have:
> # aplay --list-devices
> **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
> card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC888 Analog [ALC888 Analog]
>   Subdevices: 1/1
>   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
> card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: ALC888 Digital [ALC888 Digital]
>   Subdevices: 1/1
>   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
> card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: Generic Digital [Generic Digital]
>   Subdevices: 1/1
>   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
> card 2: M1010LT [M Audio Delta 1010LT], device 0: ICE1712 multi [ICE1712 multi]
>   Subdevices: 0/1
>   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

> And if I do alsamixer -c 1 I also get just one s/pdif in the middle of
> the screen, the graphics card appearantly have one.

I got them working (sort of) in the end, I was just lacking a USB sound
driver.

Just a point, the documentation of all these commands is shockingly bad:
alsamixer critically depends on /etc/asound.conf, but doesn't even
mention it in its man page.  It would appear that /etc/asound.conf is
wholly undocumented anywhere.  aplay likewise just says what its options
do, without saying, for example, what form the "name" following -D has,
and what its semantics are.  Get this wrong and the half error message
you get is just "file not found".

Last night I booted up the Gentoo live CD, from around 6 months ago, to
see if that would give me a clue, via dmesg, what driver I was missing;
no, that didn't work, it just gave an error message for the sound.

> alsamixer -c 0 shows the motherboard interface,
> alsamizer -c 2 shows the pci one.

> Perhaps you have more than one interface.

Indeed, something comes out of the HDMI socket, too.  That was quite
troublesome when I was trying to debug things.

> ///

>  There is a debug tool /usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh if you install
> media-sound/alsa-utils

> You can possible get better help at linux-audio-user at
> lists.linuxaudio.org

linuxaudio.org didn't actually look too helpful - they're more into
helping people run music creation programs than configuring sound cards.

> Regards,
> /Karl Hammar

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).