[CLUE-Tech] Sound Woes

[Match Grun]

On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 22:13:43 -0700
Nathan Hokanson <nathan at redfactor.com> wrote:

> Folks,
> 
> I have a Sony Vaio PCG-GRX560 (Laptop), and normally I would post this
> question to the sony-linux group, but the problem is not hardware
> related, so I thought I would come here for some help.
> 
> Recently I got the laptop back from the service department after they
> replaced my back-light.  Since part of the "service" is wiping the
> hard drive and re-installing the "default" OS (XP Home ... who's idea
> was that!!!), I had decided to try out SuSe 9.0.  It had good reviews
> on the sony-linux as working pretty much out of the box.  I used to
> run Mandrake (and was very satisfied, but wanted to try out a new
> distro)....
> 
> Long story, I know, but it helps to preface the problem.
> 
> When I play music in XMMS with alsa it starts out ok, but then starts
> to click every second or so, then the clicks begin to build up and
> pretty soon, even though you can hear the music, it is very distorted.
> 
> When I turn off alsa and use the OSS plugin music stays clear most of
> the time, but distortion creeps in once in a while, but seems to be
> corrected quickly.
> 

I have a GRX-600. I also had this problem with alsa but fixed it as
follows in XMMS Preferences dialog:

Audio I/O Plugins:
	Output plugin:
		ALSA 0.9 output plugin [libALSO.so]

Configure with:
	Device settings tab:
		Audio device Intel 82801CA-ICH3
		User defined NOT checked
		Mixer card 0
		Mixer device /dev/dsp
	Advanced settings:
		Buffer time 700 (was default for me)
		Period time 50 (was default for me)
		Mmap mode NOT checked

I think the Mmap mode setting caused the problem. You will need to
restart XMMS for the settings to take.

> I know this is not a hardware issue because sound works correctly in
> XP Home.
> 

There is actually a harware problem with this model where the CD-ROM is
concerned. Most CD-ROM cards in a desktop computer can be hardwired
directly to the sound card(with the cable). In this laptop, the output
from the CD-ROM goes to some dumb software mixer chip before it goes
back out to the sound output. card. XMMS goes out to the same mixer card
chip.

When playing a CD-ROM through XMMS on a desktop, everything works just
fine. However, through this particular laptop, you need jump through
several hoops to get the sound working.

Match

> The sound card in the machine is an AC 97 using the Intel i8x0
> chipset. Here are relevant portions of my /etc/modules.conf:
> 
> options snd-intel8x0 snd_ac97_clock=0 snd_enable=1 snd_index=0
> 
> # YaST2: sound system dependent part
> #
> alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
> alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
> alias sound-slot-1 off
> alias sound-service-1-0 off
> alias sound-slot-2 off
> alias sound-service-2-0 off
> alias sound-slot-3 off
> alias sound-service-3-0 off
> options snd snd_cards_limit=1 snd_major=116
> 
> 
> alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
> alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
> alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
> alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
> alias sound-service-0-11 snd-mixer-oss
> alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
>                                                                     
           /proc/pci lists the device as:
>  Bus  0, device  31, function  5:
>     Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio
> Controller (rev 2).
>       IRQ 9.
>       I/O at 0x1c00 [0x1cff].
>       I/O at 0x18c0 [0x18ff].
> 
> I am really hoping that this is a configuration issue, because I
> really don't want to have to recompile my kernel and/or modules
> because I tend to mess things up that way...
> 
> -- 
> Nathan Hokanson
> 
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