No sound...

[PropaNe]

I'm on Slackware 11.0 with a 2.6.20 kernel, using ALSA version 1.0.14rc2 compiled and loaded as a module, not compiled into the kernel. When I try to play music etc. the players run fine as if the music were playing, but there is no sound. Naturally I attempted running alsamixer and turning up / unmuting everything, but with no success. Any suggestions?

lspci output for my soundcard:

00:14:2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SB450 HDA Audio (rev 01)

relevant lsmod output:

Module       Size         Used By
snd_seq_oss            32768  0 
snd_seq_device          9736  1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq_midi_event      9600  1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq                46160  4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_pcm_oss            41408  0 
snd_mixer_oss          17920  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_hda_intel          20536  0 
snd_hda_codec         189104  1 snd_hda_intel
snd_pcm                67596  3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_timer              21512  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd                    44388  9 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_device,snd_seq,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer
snd_page_alloc         11272  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm

[Oxygen]

Tried OSS instead?

[PropaNe]

Yeah. Didn't work either, same sorta deal.

[Oxygen]

What does lspci tell you?

[PropaNe]

Well I put the lspci output for the soundcard in my previous post, but here's the whole thing:

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 5a31 (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:04.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:05.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 5a37
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller (rev 80)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller (rev 80)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller (rev 80)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 83)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller ATI (rev 80)
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SB450 HDA Audio (rev 01)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-ISA Bridge (rev 80)
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-PCI Bridge (rev 80)
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RC410 [Radeon Xpress 200M]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8038 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 14)
08:09.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8185 IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 20)

[Tim Sharitt]

You didn't say what kind of computer you had, but on some laptops( and possibly other setups) you need to disable the external amplifier in alsamixer. I hope this helps somebody, it took me nearly two weeks to stumble across it.

[PropaNe]

Yeah, it's a laptop. Alsamixer has the following bars:

|Master| |Capture| |Capture| |Capture| |Caller I| |Input So| |Off-hook|

Master's up all the way and unmuted, what should I do with the others?

[Kyral]

My guess is that he/she has a Gateway MT3705...because thats what I have and the lspci output is the exact same, and I'm also having problems with it. Sound card is detected, system CLAIMS to be playing sound, everything is unmuted, but nada. On Arch 0.8.0

Oh I should mention that I looked through dmesg and found this line

hda-intel: Invalid position buffer, using LPIB read method instead.

[Oxygen]

What about PCM?

[Kyral]

 Master    <  PCM   >   Capture     Caller I    Input So    Off-hook

Those are my lines. Interesting enough, if I REMOVE the snd-hda-intel module then I get my PC Speaker beep back but nothing else. Also interesting to note is that the dB Gain field in Alsamixer is 0 when maxed out...

EDIT: I've been looking around the Distro forums and it seems that a lot of people have been having this problem. The leading cause seems to be that the system is misidentifying it as the SB450 when its the SB400, which is handled by the snd-atiixp module. I've tried using the snd-atiixp module but the only difference is that I get my PC Speaker beep back, ALSA errors out completely