Very Weird Sound behaviour

[Jim March]

Update: the command:

sudo alsa force-reload

...will "fix" the sound until you plug headphones in again and break it...

[Jim March]

Same issue here. Driving me freakin' insane.

This is an all-Intel based recent model laptop, Dell Inspiron 1525, seems to be a basic HDA Intel sound setup with a SigmaTel "STAC9228" mixer.

I've tried ripping PulseAudio COMPLETELY out (sudo apt-get remove pulse*) and that hasn't helped. Sound DOES still work OK mind you, so we need to stop looking at PulseAudio as the issue - it ain't.

I've also learned that the terminal command:

sudo alsa force-reload

...will cause the sound to return out of the laptop speakers, until I plug headphones in again of course.

My hardware is an HDA Intel card, SigmaTel 9228 chipset as confirmed by this command at the terminal:

alsamixer -Dhw

Everybody else with this issue needs to do that, so we can sort out what hardware is affected. I'm guessing it's limited to the SigmaTel 9228 chipset, possibly only when it's used by Intel...

[Jim March]

Whoops, I had the same thread open in two windows, my bad...sigh...

[Jim March]

SUCCESS! PROBLEM SOLVED! Except...

...I had to rip out not just PulseAudio, but also ALSA (gulp).

The good news: I replaced it with OSS4, using the really VERY good instructions at:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenSound

Note that there's even Intrepid-specific notes, plus 64-bit specific stuff!

I would strongly recommend ripping PulseAudio out first the same way I did before following these instructions.

This pins the problem down to the ALSA subsystem somehow, and likely the snd_hda_intel driver.

So far I've tested OSS4 with Totem, Rythmbox, VLC Player 9.3 and Adobe's 10rc2 flash player by way of Firefox. Kewl. Literally zero issues, once I used System>Preferences>Sound to configure all sound output to "OSS4 - HD Audio Play Front" after following the instructions at the above link.

I've tested this in Gnome ONLY so far! There are however KDE-specific notes, and I see no reason why this won't work in XUbuntu as well.

Understand: this is a pretty damn radical solution and some apps may choke unless reconfigured. But it DOES work and should get us over the hump to full release assuming that this IS fixed in ALSA/Pulse by release date (no guarantees of course).

[lucazade]

The OSS4 control panel is impressive!
I've installed it some minutes ago with no issues and it seems to work out of the box.. interesting

[bur[n]er]

I must say, I'm hesitant to replace PulseAudio and Alsa with OSS. Anyone figure out a way to fix this with pulse?

My card is a "Sigmatel STAC9227" in a Dell Dimension e520 desktop. Any help would be appreciated! Here's hoping it's fixed before Intrepid's release.

[psyke83]

Yes, it appears it is possible to get sound working correctly for your laptop and headphones if you enable a specific quirk (ironically, I found the solution on the openSUSE forums when googling the keywords of this post).

Starting here: http://forums.opensuse.org/hardware/...-speakers.html
Directs you to this post: http://forums.opensuse.org/archives/...ml#post1798954

In other words, edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base, and append to the end of this file:

options snd-hda-intel model=dell-3stack

The setting should take effect after a restart.

I feel really sorry for the poor sod who installed OSSv4...

[psyke83]

Originally Posted by bur[n]er I must say, I'm hesitant to replace PulseAudio and Alsa with OSS. Anyone figure out a way to fix this with pulse? My card is a "Sigmatel STAC9227" in a Dell Dimension e520 desktop. Any help would be appreciated! Here's hoping it's fixed before Intrepid's release.

Of course, see my post above (though you may need to specify a different driver quirk).

I am >99% certain that it won't be fixed, unless you file a bug confirming the necessity of said quirk, and give your specific system specs. Only then can this quirk be made default for your hardware.

[bur[n]er]

Thanks for the tip Psycke. I'll find out when I reboot if it worked.

To those that used the "sudo alsa force-reload" trick. You also have to run "pulseaudio" again after alsa is reloaded and then relaunch any sound apps.

/me fires up launchpad.net to file a bug

[bur[n]er]

Bug report posted:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/279478