latest upgrade (KDE 4.6.2) broke sound

[dougmack]

I did a full upgrade tonite--(7 Apr)--it deleted about 3 files and "upgraded" about 193.  When it was done, the only internet radio station that produces sound is KSEY, which plays thru real-player gold. No sound from WSM no matter how I try to get it.  (FF, or Streamtuner or Radio Tray, or the Radio Streamer ap available on the net.)  WSM tries to play in Real Player.  No sound. Tried a couple of stations from Radio Streamer, one said it was buffering, but then no sound.  WSM did not load from Radio Streamer,  but when found in FF, everything looked normal, but no sound. Also tried  WFUV in FF. Not a peep. Clementine used to have something called an "Aulabauge" file.  That's gone.  I never knew how to add anything to it. I never knew how to add anything to Streamtuner preferences either.  I don't know how it got KSEY in it. Radio Tray never worked here. Of course, nothing has anything in the "help" file. Is there a secret cache somewhere that has instructions on how to use all this stuff? I don't really care too much what method I use to tune in a station, just so long as sound comes out.   
Tried to play mp3 file from a CD, by snapping on the name of the file in Dolphin.  Got a little box that had a runner going back and forth, then a bigger box that said copying, and would have taken forever, if I let it go on. But didn't play.  Another broken system.
Anyway, what do I do now? 
--doug

[longtom]

Latest update in LXDE and my sound was gone as well.  Went into Alsa Mixer and saw all my sliders at 0.  Put them back up the way I need them, including mic, and made and saved a screenshot for future reference.

Worth a shot ....

[dougmack]

One of the stations is playing fine as I write this--KSEY.  (I like classic country.)  So that doesn't seem to be the problem.
Anyway, after I wrote this, I saw a message from one of the devs that said if the upgrade is older than 30 days to d/l a new
version of pclos and start over.  That would really be a pain, but if I can save my unique files, I'll do it.  It would be nice if
somebody told me that everything would work, and I wouldn't have all the problems I have sort of solved over the past 10 months
or so.  --doug

[Was_Just19]

What is showing in the mixer?  What channels and are the volume sliders up?

If you have a digital sound output on the motherboard that may have taken priority with the update.

[dougmack]

As far as I know, there is no digital output on the mobo.  The only mixers I am aware of are the gui volume controls: the one that shows a little speaker in the task bar--it's up about 60%--and the pulseaudio volume control: all the sliders are at least 1/2 way up.
Anyway, if one source will play, why won't they all?  I suspect that this has something to do with the flash player, since so many
have complained about problems with it, and I know that WSM uses flash player.
And what about the mp3's that I can't play either, anymore? 

Up til now, I have really liked pclos, but sound problems are what drove me from SuSE 3 or 4 years ago, and they may drive me
from pclos now.  (I never, in about 5 years of SuSE versions, heard any sound out of the system.)

[muungwana]

This announcement point may be relevant to you

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,89207.0.html

Its always useful to look there once in a while, especially before doing a large update or when its been a while since you last update

[dougmack]

I did as the site you mentioned said, and ran alsaconf, which said it made some kind of modification on one of my
sound cards.  As a result, I still can't play anything but KSEY--everything else says "buffering" but never gets finished.
In addition, where Streamtuner used to work for KSEY, it no longer does, altho the station is listed in "preferences."
So, if anything, alsaconf broke things even further. 

--doug

[Was_Just19]

As far as I know, there is no digital output on the mobo.  The only mixers I am aware of are the gui volume controls: the one that shows a little speaker in the task bar--it's up about 60%--and the pulseaudio volume control: all the sliders are at least 1/2 way up.
Anyway, if one source will play, why won't they all?  I suspect that this has something to do with the flash player, since so many
have complained about problems with it, and I know that WSM uses flash player.
And what about the mp3's that I can't play either, anymore? 

Up til now, I have really liked pclos, but sound problems are what drove me from SuSE 3 or 4 years ago, and they may drive me
from pclos now.  (I never, in about 5 years of SuSE versions, heard any sound out of the system.)

First off there is a mixer available from the volume control in the tray.
When running Pulse Audio that is likely to be rather sparse, but at least you should be able to tell us what the controls are called ......  digital or analog etc. Mine for instance is called SB Live! Analogue Stereo.

After that some informatin about how things are set in Pulse Vol Control is needed.

Without your settings we are just guessing at what might be a problem.

Take a few pics and post them so we can see.

[scoundrel]

also you mentioned one of your sound cards ?? how many do you have ..

[dougmack]

I have 2 sound "cards"--one is a device on the mobo, one is a real card. They have different IRQ's, and they are
different chips--one is SiS, the other is Trident.  I was hoping to use one for speaker output and the other for a headset with phones and mic.  That never got accomplished.  I have some advice from the forum, but I didn't get around to trying to implement it--it's complicated. I don't know how to post a picture of the pavu, but it looks like this:

Both ports are titled "Internal audio analog stereo" and after the word port, it says "Analog output (LFE) amplifier"
All four sliders are set midway.

The sound is comping out of the mobo channel.  One of the fixes that I never got to implement was supposed to fix it
so that the card in use was not arbitrarily selected by alsa.  (Sometimes, if I rebooted, the sound came out the other
[headphone] channel.) At the present time, there is no way I can choose which channel is active.  I was going to work on
this stuff, but I decided it might be a good idea to bring the system up to latest upgrade first, and everything went to hell.
I discover that OO no longer works either.  It crashes.  No, I don't want Libre.  Other lists indicate that it's not up to par.

--doug

[Was_Just19]

Well here is a nice one .......  I went to get a few pics to compare, plugged in my wireless headset, and had the Config tab of PAVU showing three devices .....  the Headset, the analogue card and a HDMI of the Video card.

Whatever I did I screwed up everything ......  as I could not seem to get sound on the headset .......  and now like you have no sound on anything.

The output is using a "Dummy" sink!

I will have a look at this tomorrow after a reboot just in case some package I have updated has caused it because I have not rebooted.

......  we'll see .......

[Was_Just19]

Did a reboot after running alsaconf with all audio apps closed, and all is OK again.
It didn't help that in the middle of it all my wireless headset batteries ran out of juice 

So, back on topic ......  some pics of what PAVU should look like with the following devices ...

HDMI audio on the video card .....  turned off in PAVU
SB Live! audio card feeding my speakers
Wireless Headset

OK, first pic shows the devices on the Config page of PAVU



The second is a complete list of the options for my SB Live! sound card



The third is showing the Playback page of PAVU, where I choose the sound device that I want the audio stream sent



In a working set up I would expect something similar to be shown.

regards.

[dougmack]

Reply to just 19--I don't know how you got those pictures.  I can only give a word description.Playback:
one slider at 78% on a track that says MONO. Output devices: 2 ports show.  I set both of them to Analog
output (LFE) amplifier, which is where it was when it played, earlier today.  Sliders are set about 70% on all
4 channels.  Nothing is playing. Configuration: Two separate sections, each with "analog stereo output".
Apparently I killed the sound altogether.  It kept coming up in Whaaw when I hadn't asked it to, and not
playing, so I went to Synaptic and removed whaah completely.  I don't know what effect that had--I had never
even tried to select that.  When KSEY was playing, it was using real player gold.  Back before "upgrading" it played
WSM in just plain real player, I think.  And it played an mp3 file jsut by snapping on it in dolphin.

I'm getting disgusted. --doug

[longtom]

I'm getting disgusted. --doug

So am I.  Here are people who try to help you with your unique problem, which nobody else seems to have and you can't get as far as acknowledging that, never mind maybe squeezing out a "Thank you". 

[Village Idiot]

I'm getting disgusted. --doug

So am I.  Here are people who try to help you with your unique problem, which nobody else seems to have and you can't get as far as acknowledging that, never mind maybe squeezing out a "Thank you". 

Easy, man. 

I think if you replace the word disgusted with frustrated in that post... It could change the whole perspective of the situation.

We've all been there with Linux at some point: You get in a bind with the OS and so the OS and everyone associated with it becomes the enemy. Our friend dougmack isn't at that point yet and we should try to make sure he doesn't reach that point either, if our own experiences have taught us anything.

Peace.