[SOLVED] No sound in ALSA except microphone

[snikkith]

Hi there.

After doing a system-wide upgrade in Gentoo (sudo emerge -Du world, arch is ~amd64) my ALSA sound is not working. I can, however, hear input to my microphone over the headphones if i unmute it.
But if I want to play an audio file (e.g. with aplay), I hear nothing, but there are no errors.


Alsa is built as modules with the latest kernel 2.6.36-rc2 but I had the same problem when I switched back to the old 2.6.34 kernel.

I am close to mental breakdown and deprived of quite some sleep, but I simply cant find the problem, although it seems so close to working: I can hear myself scratching on the microphone, but I can't hear anything else. I am done with what I can do, now any help would be very much appreciated.

And now the facts I consider relevant:

In alsamixer, all mixers show up as usual, all not muted and turned up.

Lspci | grep Audio detects the following:

00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) (rev 40)
01:05.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc RS880 Audio Device [Radeon HD 4200]

dmesg | grep [hH][dD][aA] says:

[    5.615768] HDA Intel 0000:00:14.2: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
[    6.160047] hda_codec: ALC892: BIOS auto-probing.
[    6.160412] hda_codec: Too many connections 4 for NID 0x1b
[    6.164358] HDA Intel 0000:01:05.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
[    6.164389] HDA Intel 0000:01:05.1: setting latency timer to 64

don't know if that is relevant.

cat /proc/asound/cards tells the following:

 0 [SB             ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI SB
                      HDA ATI SB at 0xfe6f8000 irq 16
 1 [HDMI           ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI HDMI
                      HDA ATI HDMI at 0xfe8e8000 irq 19

lsmod says:

Module                  Size  Used by
snd_seq_dummy           1542  0 
snd_seq_oss            24575  0 
snd_seq_midi_event      5914  1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq                45150  5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device          5527  3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss            32994  0 
snd_mixer_oss          12959  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_hda_codec_atihdmi     2559  1 
snd_hda_codec_realtek   280900  1 
radeon                690437  0 
ttm                    51288  1 radeon
drm_kms_helper         25797  1 radeon
snd_hda_intel          21609  0 
snd_hda_codec          78520  3 snd_hda_codec_atihdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep               5754  1 snd_hda_codec
drm                   180842  3 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper
agpgart                30127  2 ttm,drm
fb                     47326  2 radeon,drm_kms_helper
fbdev                    861  1 fb
snd_pcm                70063  3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_timer              17852  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd                    55979  11 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_timer
i2c_algo_bit            4557  1 radeon
cfbcopyarea             3021  1 radeon
r8169                  32889  0 
mii                     4142  1 r8169
soundcore               5935  1 snd
cfbimgblt               2205  1 radeon
cfbfillrect             3097  1 radeon
snd_page_alloc          7157  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm

aplay -l gives:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: ALC892 Digital [ALC892 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: ATI HDMI [ATI HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

alsasound seems to work:

sudo /etc/init.d/alsasound restart
 * WARNING: you are stopping a boot service
 * Storing ALSA Mixer Levels ...                                                                                 [ ok ]
 * Loading ALSA modules ...
 *   Loading: snd-card-0 ...                                                                                     [ ok ]
 * Restoring Mixer Levels ...                                                                                    [ ok

If any information is missing, please tell me.

Thanks again for any help, you guys might save me from reinstalling a whole new distribution.

Greetings, Snikkith

[snikkith]

The most stupid solution always is the best.

I solved this by going to the Realtek-Website and downloading the linux-driver module for alsa there, as the drivers supplied with alsa from gentoo-repositories seem to be broken / not supporting this card. It is strange, however, that no errors showed up when using a card that seems to be not supported....

Anyways, thread marked as "solved".