8.10 ATI IXP Sound Issues

**Tonren** · January 7th, 2009

Edit: Posted as a bug

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/314736

--------

Hi all. The sound on my Compaq Presario v2565us laptop is broken. It kind of worked for a while, but now I can't get sound anywhere--no Flash videos, no mpd/mpc, no mpg123.

Here is the output of some relevant commands:

lspci -v

Code:

00:14.5 Multimedia audio controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 3091
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, slow devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17
        Memory at c0003400 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: ATI IXP AC97 controller
        Kernel modules: snd-atiixp

lsmod | grep ati

Code:

cpufreq_conservative    14600  0
snd_atiixp             24204  4
snd_atiixp_modem       20360  0
snd_ac97_codec        111652  2 snd_atiixp,snd_atiixp_modem
rsrc_nonstatic         19072  1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core            43412  3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
snd_pcm                83204  5 snd_atiixp,snd_atiixp_modem,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd                    63268  16 snd_atiixp,snd_atiixp_modem,snd_ac97_codec,snd_seq_oss,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
snd_page_alloc         16136  3 snd_atiixp,snd_atiixp_modem,snd_pcm
ati_agp                14988  0  
agpgart                42184  2 fglrx,ati_agp
pata_atiixp            12800  3  
libata                177312  3 pata_acpi,pata_atiixp,ata_generic

mpg123 SPACE\ LION.mp3

Code:

High Performance MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 Audio Player for Layer 1, 2, and 3.
Version 0.59q (2002/03/23). Written and copyrights by Joe Drew.
Uses code from various people. See 'README' for more!
THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Title  : SPACE LION                      Artist: Yoko Kanno
Album  : COWBOY BEBOP O.S.T.1            Year  :
Comment:                                 Genre : Anime

Playing MPEG stream from SPACE LION.mp3 ...
MPEG 1.0 layer III, 128 kbit/s, 44100 Hz joint-stereo
ALSA lib pcm_pulse.c:625:(pulse_prepare) PulseAudio: Unable to create stream: Invalid argument

ALSA snd_pcm_hw_params error: Input/output error

cat /proc/asound/cards

Code:

 0 [IXP            ]: ATIIXP - ATI IXP
                      ATI IXP rev 2 with unknown codec at 0xc0003400, irq 17
 1 [Modem          ]: ATIIXP-MODEM - ATI IXP Modem
                      ATI IXP Modem rev 2 at 0xc0003800, irq 17

aplay -l

Code:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: IXP [ATI IXP], device 0: ATI IXP AC97 [ATI IXP AC97]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Modem [ATI IXP Modem], device 0: ATI IXP MC97 [ATI IXP MC97]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

When I go to System -> Preferences -> Sound and hit "Test" with Autodetect selected under "Sound Events", I get this error:

Code:

audiotestsrc wave=sine freq=512 ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink: Failed to connect stream: Invalid argument

Additionally, the Sound Preferences window stops functioning, and I have to close it with xkill.

When I hit "Test" with Autodetect selected under Music, I get the same error, but the error dialog won't even close; I have to kill the whole thing with xkill.

I tried installing alsa-oss and running Firefox (for example) using aoss, but it didn't work.

I tried doing sudo rmmod snd_atiixp_modem because I heard it clobbers the regular snd_atiixp module, but that didn't work either.

I tried manually changing the dropdowns in Sound Preferences, but none of them worked. All of the ones of the form "ATI IXP..." would make a "Test in Progress" pop-up, but none of them produced any sound. A while ago, I tried it with OSS selected, and it produced sound, but it doesn't anymore. I'm not sure what's changed.

Some other questions, if anyone knows the answer:

What's the difference between ALSA, OSS, PulseAudio, and ESD?

How do I know which ones are installed?

How can I make it so that my applications only use one of them?

Why does Ubuntu apparently come with all of the first three?

Thanks.

**pussinboots** · January 12th, 2009

I had similar troubles and found that the solution was to switch to OSS:

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

At least, it worked for me. My card is:

00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)

Cheers,

Jason

**t0mc4t** · January 12th, 2009

Hallo,

I also have the same issue... If I play some movie (avi), it works for first couple of minutes, then the sounds is broken..
I will try to use OSS then..

Anyway.. I'm using ATI Radeon Xpress 200M.
Thanks..