To The Coffee Monkey. This site Is my first web design. It has been through two other versions. Both of the previous two were strictly coffee related. My Interests and hobbies have expanded since then as has web design. All of the old content has been removed because it is, simply that, Old. I am starting the page from scratch. I have added sections for Linux and Written Word. My main interest is still coffee so there is, of course, still the section for coffee.
For this article I am using (K)Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04. My primary GUI is KDE. The instructions for GNOME are aproximately the same. Much of this is not GUI specefic once you get past the first section.
If you are not getting any sound it is possible that your sound is simply muted. (K)Ubuntu is notorious for defaulting with the sound muted. If this is the problem it can easily be fixed.
Open a terminal and type the following.
For Kmix, Go To:Settings-->Configure Kmix. Check the boxes for "Dock into Panel","Enable System Tray Volume Control", and "Restore Volume on Login." The others are up to your preference. To finish select "OK". Speaker icon should appear in your panel next to the time and date. You can use that to access Kmix in the future. Now you must unmute any of the outputs that are darkened. Pull the sliders all the way to the top. The inputs you should mute unless they are in use. If left unmuted they can cause feedback or static.
To further configure and then test your sound system, go to the System Settings in your Kicker Menu. Select the option for Sound System under the Computer Administration heading. At the top of the General tap check the box next to "Enable the Sound System." Then select the hardware tab. Here Select the option for Autodetect for Audio Device. Again, select the General tab. At the bottom of the page, press the button that says test sound. If you hear the music comming out your sound system is working. You can skip to the next section.
If the KDE configuration still does not worked you will need to ensure that Ubuntu has recognized your sound card. Open a terminal. At the prompt type:
(Only type what follows the user@localhost:~$ prompt for any commands in this document.)
It should then return something like:
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****If it instead returns something like:
aplay: device_list:221: no soundcard found...
Ubuntu has not recognized your soundcard. This can be due to either the driver not being installed or the card not being enabled/recognized in the BIOS. If it is onboard, shut down your system and go in to the BIOS. Make sure that the card is enabled. If it is a card make sure that it is seated well. Once you restart the system open a terminal and type:
This will return the results of what ubuntu has recognized of your hardware associated with the PCI Bus.
You should see a listing for Audio Device which will then be followed by the name of your hardware. It reads the EPROM directly from the chip. It will help if you know what brand of soundcard or at least the chip that the card is using so that you will be able to more easily find the driver.
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SB450 HDA Audio (rev 01)
. Subsystem: Intel Corporation Unknown device d601
. Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 64, IRQ 19
. Memory at 30200000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
. Capabilities: access denied
My sound card is "ATI Technologies Inc SB450 HDA Audio (rev 01)." This one was recognized by Ubuntu and the drivers installed. If yours did not the next step would be to go to The ALSA SoundCard Matrix. Locate the Vendor of chipset in the matrix and select that link. There will be a list of the models for the chipset that are supported by the ALSA driver. If you do not see a listing for your brand and/or model of sound card you will need to search the vendor website for a Linux driver. If they do not have one on their site I recommend that you contact them to let them know that there is a demand for drivers in Linux. Unfortunately, the only option if you want sound is to purchase a card that is supported by Linux. Take note of the chipsets that are supported by ALSA before you make your purchase.
On the other hand, if you have found your soundcard listed you will be able to use the ALSA driver. There is documentation next to the listing for your card detailing how to install the driver. You still need to download the driver though. The package contains the same documentation so I recommend that you download the latest package from the ALSA main page. I am not going to detail how to install because the instillation may change as they release the latest packages. You will need some working knowledge of Linux command line and root access.