No audio in E17-compiz

[Vincente]

Hi, I am an escapee from M$. Each Linux distro I have tried I have had enormous problems with sound, most recently Karmic, 9.10 and U.E. 2.4. Having read, literally 100's of forum entries, most "fixes" do NOT work and in the end, removing PulseAudio gets the sound back. I cannot understand how a program can be so ill-thought out and flawed. Anyway, I have E17-Compiz ( I know, it is not stable) on a 32Bit machine, no problems with audio. When I install it on a 64Bit machine, ZotacION MB, no sound. The elive forum is loaded with people having the same problem, but the forum is poor and little help can be found there. Can someone provide simple, easy to follow steps for me to have sound in E17-compiz to save me removing PulseAudio again....I always hate to remove something a developer has put in as I figure he must know what he is doing, but having a great Linux distro like E17-compiz without sound is like finally bringing home that bigscreen TV you have always wanted, setting it up, beautiful picture....NO Sound. Thank you for your anticipated help in this matter. John Vincent

[coling]

Replying to Vincente:

I cannot understand how a program can be so ill-thought out and flawed.

Good way to start a post asking for support!

99.99% of the time, sound problems with PA result from a poorly configured default system. Distros have traditionally done a pretty poor job at integrating PA and Ubuntu is probably the worst offender, but are thankfully beginning to improve.

I'd suggest you try a live CD from other distros to see if the problem will be the same there. As the person responsible for sound integration on Mandriva and as a release has just been made, I can only recommend trying a "Mandriva One" flavour of your choice: http://torrent.mandriva.com/public/2010.0/

Failing that, the general order of things is:

1. Ensure that pure alsa is working: pasuspender -- aplay -Dhw:0,0 /usr/share/sounds/startup3.wav If this doesn't work the problem is unrelated to PulseAudio.
2. If ALSA works, then check the Output Devices tab in pavucontrol. If it says "Dummy Output" or similar it means that another application is hogging the sound device and PA cannot use it. You can find out which application is hogging the device via fuser /dev/dsp and fuser /dev/snd/* commands.
3. If your real sound card shows up in pavucontrol's Output Devices tab, then check the "Configuration" tab and ensure the correct profile is used.

Lastly, the configuration and handling of ALSA mixers is a very tricky and error prone business. Users almost always do not know what the various sliders and controls in the ALSA mixers actually do and getting sound working is usually a matter of tweaking everything and eventually getting sound output! This is far from ideal and PA is trying to rationalise that and hide everything from users, but due to the massive amount of different hardware out there, we cannot cover all bases and need user feedback to solve these problems and improve the situation for everyone. This is how free software works and it's is expected of users who participate in the free software ecosystem to provide this kind of feed back and appreciate the development model without getting upset or angry.

So if the above does not help you, please provide the output from:

1. pulseaudio -k; pulseaudio -vvvvv (run as a single command and you may have to repeat it a few times to get past the "PID file" error due to the system trying to automatically respawn PA for you).
2. When PulseAudio is running the output from pacmd ls

[coling]

3. One more output I forgot above: amixer -c 0

[Vincente]

Sorry, seems I hit a raw nerve which was not my intention. I probably could have worded it better in that I appreciate that PA must have credential, ....the perplexation is, with it being in the position it is, how in the world can there be so many problems with sound over so many different linux distros??

You know, as consumers, say we buy that big screen TV we have been lusting for and upon getting it home and set up, we are greeted with the anticipated tremendous picture....but....NO Sound? We contact the mfgr/retailer and are given pages of rocket science hieroglyphics to stumble through in hopes of activating sound. No one would stand, for a minute, that scenario yet it is an every day occurance with Linux.

I am the average guy trying to make the transition from M$ to Linux, am not a computer tech/rocket scientist (nor do I want to be) but it is, after all, the year 2009 and it is unbelieveable something as basic as "sound" presents so much difficulty.....this is not limited to Ubuntu (although their 100's of pages of pleas for help indicate the depth of the problem and the popularity of that particular distro)...almost every other distro I have tried has sound problems with pleas for help in their related support forums.

You state: "...(we, PA)...need user feedback to solve these problems and improve the situation for everyone...." and really that was my ill-worded (evidently) intent as, being that "average" user, I would hope linux can become more user friendly as I have seen too many people defeated in the effort to make the transition...good example is a 10 page "fix" I can link to you (if interested) by a person way beyond me in his technical abilities and understanding.....a 10 page fix of forumulas only an Einstein could appreciate....and this gentleman, in the end, still could not get sound and ending by saying: "To hell with it, I disabled PulseAudio and bingo, got my sound back" This speaks volumes to any who really want to hear.

Thanks for your suggestions, I will try to follow them, not sure I have the technical savy to do so, but, as they say, any port in a storm....and, I guess I always have the "to hell with it" option to fall back on......though that's a shame, it shouldn't have to come to that.