Audigy 2 sound card it no work in Mint 13

[floppybootstomp]

The problem is I can’t get an old Creative Audigy 2 sound card to work in Linux Mint 13 64 Bit KDE.

A little bit of history. Bedroom AMD machine, used mostly for video and audio activities, editing, recording and stuff. Machine has a swappable hard disk caddy that I swap OS’s in and out of, only Windows OS is XP SP3 32 Bit.

I was using a Creative X-Fi Audio sound card and this was recognised and worked fine within both XP and Mint. That card crapped out on me so I switched to onboard sound, AC97 Realtek thingie. This also worked ok in both OS’s.

Within Win XP I sometimes record vinyl to digital, usually WAV or FLAC. I noticed these recordings (using old version of dbPoweramp with Auxillary record module) were showing occasional dropout, similar to the effect of a vinyl record jumping. I tried various things to remedy the problem but no go so blew the dust of the Audigy 2 sound card and installed it.

Surprisingly Creative still supplied XP drivers for the card so installed these and in XP it’s working great, in fact it sounds better than both onboard sound and the X-Fi Audio. That ‘X-Fi’, incidentally, isn’t a real X-Fi, it’s a cheapie using the Soundblaster chipset, naughty naughty Creative.

The vinyl recordings are all ok now so the Audigy sorted the prob. But it won’t work in Mint.

I tried a fresh install of Mint and installed all the crap I like, Opera, Scribus and stuff and updated Nvidia drivers. Still no go. So searched repository manager using buzzwords ‘Creative’ ‘Audigy’ ‘Audigy 2’ ‘Soundblaster' – nothing. Searched web for solution and nothing conclusive. Many people with same problem but no solution.

The onboard sound is disabled in the BIOS btw. Creative – surprise surprise – don’t supply Linux drivers.

So, does anybody know a way round this or is a new sound card on the cards? I don’t mind lashing out, will probably go for a cheap/mid-priced Asus card, but thought I best ask before putting hand in pocket for cash.

I’m also going to try some more distros, downloading Ubuntu right now (they ask for money for what amounts to DLC btw, goodies for $16 minimum, optional but nevertheless worrying) and I’m going to try Suse, used Suse a few years back and liked it but it has to be configured for media use as I remember.

Any other distro recommendations for a numbnuts like me ?

Here’s the computer spec:

Asus M2N sli Deluxe motherboard
AMD Athlon AM2 XP6400+ 3.2Ghz dual core CPU
Noctua NH-U12F CPU Cooler with 2 x 120mm Noctua fans
2Gb (2 x 1Gb) Corsair XMS DDR2 6400C5 memory
BFG Nvidia 9800GTX 512Mb Video card
On board LAN
Creative Audigy 2 Sound Card
Sata II Caddies For Primary drive x 4 housing:
500Gb Western Digital SATA II Hard Disk (Win XP)
160Gb Samsung SATA II Hard Disk (Linux Mint 13 KDE ‘Maya’)
Two spare caddies, empty as at 07-12-12
Hitachi 2Tb storage Hard disk
Hauppage Nova T-500 Twin Digital PCI TV Tuner card
Dazzle Platinum USB Video/Audio interface breakout box
Merc Alpha Black Tower Case
Corsair 650W Non Modular PSU
DVDRW SATA
DVD-ROM SATA
A Floppy Drive
Microsoft corded game controller
Logitech corded G5 Laser Mouse
Razer Lycosa keyboard
Viewsonic VA2448 23” Monitor
Pioneer A400 80wpc amplifier
A pair of Fostex 4” full range Loudspeakers
Epson Stylus P50 Inkjet colour printer
Epson 4490 Photo Scanner

 

[Quadophile]

Sorry about your woes with the Audigy card but I have not idea why it was not recognised as most Linux distros do recognise older harware without any issues. Wait for Urmas or Abarbarian to chime in, they may offer a solution hopefully.

As for distros I seriously want you to consider Kubuntu, it is by far the best distro that I have come across. Try out the Live CD and play around with it before you install it. Let me know what you think about it. I comes in both flavours 32 bit as well as 64 bit. You can download it and use Unetbootin to create bootable USB stick so need not burn a DVD all the time for experimentation with various distros.

 

[Quadophile]

Pick anyone you like:

Unetbootin

Universal USB Installer

 

[Abarbarian]

Flops your Audigy card was recognized under Mint 5 so I doubt it is a driver problem.

More likely to be that your os is picking the default on board sound and not finding the Audigy. I had a similar problem with Arch and my Xonar DS. I had to fiddle about with some config files to get it to work.

Can not give any instructions as the os's are radically different and I have forgotten what I did. A search for setting up a separate sound card under Ubuntu or Debian should find you a solution. it should be an easy fix.

As to recommendations for an alternative os,

Here goes,

http://www.bodhilinux.com/about_bodhi.php

This gets rave reviews and is used by some folks at that other place I frequent and the developer calls in there from time to time. Uses E 17 for a desktop/window manager which is slicker than a penguin on melting ice. Seems like a pretty stable and neat os.

http://linuxlock.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/solusos-and-me.html

http://solusos.com/about/

This is a fairly new os based on Debian stable which means it should be rock steady. It gives a Gnome 2 desktop which uses Gnome 3 as a base which may seem strange but it works well. Read the first link if interested, Helios rarely recommends or promotes rubbish.

http://manual.siduction.org/en/wel-quickstart-en.htm#welcome-quick

Siduction is also used by some folk at the other place and comes highly recomended. Debian based again. Apparently the Razor-qt desktop/wm is as eye candy neat as you could ever want and fast aswell.

http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2012/12/10/rosa-desktop-2012-preview/

http://www.rosalab.com/products/desktop

This is a Russian variant of Mandriva using KDE both of which have come a long way towards being stable and pretty lately. If you like eye candy with reasonable resource usage this will fit very nicely. I get the impression that it has some advantages over Mageia.

http://www.cinnarch.com/

http://www.ownersguidepdf.com/download-manual-ebook/arch-simplicity-linux-magazine-pdf.pdf

The purpose of Cinnarch is to provide a modern, elegant and powerful operating system based on one of the best Linux distributions out there, Arch Linux, and featuring the popular Cinnamon desktop environment.

What can I say an unashamed plug for the best os on the planet. seriously though it is well worth a look.

My Arch has given me very little trouble over the last year and most of that has been caused by me trying out some very esoteric programs. I am giving E17 another go as after ten years the first stable release is due on Dec 21st. I'm not abandoning Window Maker though. After the new year I'll have more time and intend spending some time to see if I can gain the geeky skills needed to tweak it to suit me.

Happy penguin hunting Flops.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Well, tonight I've been messin' about with this problem and without going into a great deal of detail:

Bought Asus Xonar DG soundcard, 28 quid from PC World, took out Audigy 2 and installed Asus Xonar budget card. It worked straight away in Mint but when I used it in XP it did not give me sufficient recording levels when recording vinyl using dbPoweramp freebie with aux module add-on so abandoned that idea

Put Audigy 2 back in, installed OpenSuse 12.2 and Audigy 2 worked fine with Suse. However when I started Suse Again, the graphics were scrambled and nothing I could do resolved the problem. So I abandoned Suse.

Installed latest version of PC LinuxOS, froze on me several times on start, never did get it working, gave up on that one.

Installed Sabayon Kfce latest version, Audigy 2 didn't work with this distro either. Also couldn't find hardware settings in Sabayo, very unintuitive distro, didn't like this at all.

Going to try Ubuntu (who actually ask for money during download) but don't have high hopes.

I want to make Linux work, I ain't no Windows fanboy but if I were to be perfectly honest Windows are winning so far, I don't want a battle, I just want things to work.

And yes I know that's no argument but it is, however, the truth

I put the cheapo Asus sound card in my media machine (to replace onboard sound) , by the way, using digital optical otput to a DAC and the sound improvement is very very noticable, it's excellent. Listened to Dusty singing 'Windmills Of Your Mind' close my eyes and she's in the room with me - lovin' it.

Finally, beginning to wonder if maybe my hardware system has a fault, to tell you the truth, not the first time this 5.5 year old AMD system has thrown up a few peculiar quirks.

 

[Quadophile]

Flops,

Don't just give up it is not a good idea. Linux distro's were never this good they sure have come a long way. I advise you to use both OS simultaneously on your machine or you can have a dedicated Linux box or Laptop and another for Windows.

You already know what happened to my new laptop, I still will not give up.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Flops,

Don't just give up it is not a good idea. Linux distro's were never this good they sure have come a long way. I advise you to use both OS simultaneously on your machine or you can have a dedicated Linux box or Laptop and another for Windows.

You already know what happened to my new laptop, I still will not give up.

Thanks for the reply Quad. As outlined in the spec in my first post I use one machine for both Windows XP and various Linux Distros using an installed hard disk caddy where I can swap over the primary hard disk with various OS's on them.

Each time I install a new Linux Distro I disconnect the 2Tb internal storage drive just to avoid accidentally wiping it so that leaves me free to use a whole HDD for installs safe in the knowledge I won't make mistakes. A bit of a luxury, if you will.

At the moment I have four disks in 'trays' Win XP on a 500Gb disk then three at sizes: 750Gb; 500gb and 120Gb, though I suspect there may be problems with the 120Gb disk, Paragon Disk Manager won't open it and that's the disk I installed the copy of PC_LinuxOS to which didn't work.

I use Win XP on this machine (Spec in 1st post) primarily for audio and video recording and editing and also for a few games that only work in XP. I have yet to find programs to do the same work in Linux though tbh I haven't really tried that hard to find any. Scribus has replaced MS Publisher within Linux for me though it's harder to use than Publisher.

I'm going to run full tests on the 120Gb disk, thankfully it's the smallest disk so no real grief it it's faulty. I also have a pair of 1Tb disks I use for backup in an external dock so for now if I need all 4 disks in caddy trays I could use one of those temporarily.

Abarb, I've noted your suggestions and I'll also give Puppy Linux (what a daft name, me no like cute) a try.

This is all so very time consuming though.

Mint 13 actually works very well except for two things - the sound card isn't working, a problem I will try and address, and I keep getting Java script error messages when interacting online with websites.

 

[Abarbarian]

http://alsa.opensrc.org/Main_Page

http://alsa.opensrc.org/Sound_Cards:_Introduction

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

When you get time having a read from the above may help.

Meanwhile in a console try, " aplay -l " and post the result. You might need " sudo aplay -l ".My output is below.

$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: DS [Xonar DS], device 0: Multichannel [Multichannel]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: DS [Xonar DS], device 1: Digital [Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Also try " lspci -v | grep -A7 -i "audio" ". Mine below.

$ lspci -v | grep -A7 -i "audio"
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF104 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
        Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 835c
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
        Memory at fbffc000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        [COLOR=Red]Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel (for onboard sound)
[/COLOR]
02:08.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CMI8788 [Oxygen HD Audio]
        Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Virtuoso 66 (Xonar DS)
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 18
        I/O ports at 9c00 [size=256]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        [COLOR=Red]Kernel driver in use: snd_virtuoso (for Xonar DS)
[/COLOR]
03:00.0 Mass storage controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3132 Serial ATA Raid II Controller (rev 01)

Your problem may be caused by not having the correct sound module in your kernel.

The audio cards used in most home computers are based on the Intel AC'97 standard (see below). This defines a set of standard controls on the audio chip and is sufficient for high level programs to find out what controls are available on each card and to then issue the correct commands.
Unfortunately, the PCI interface is not fully specified by AC'97 and so different ALSA drivers are needed for each type of PCI interface. As a result, in a running system, the command lsmod | grep snd will show the module snd_ac97_codec which handles the AC'97 standard. It will show that this is calling a second module to handle the PCI interface. For the Via8235 above this would be the module snd_via82xx. For the Nvidia CK804 it will be snd_intel8x0, as Nvidia and Intel use the same interface standard.

My " lsmod | grep " output.

$ lsmod | grep snd
snd_hda_codec_hdmi     24529  4 
[COLOR=Red]snd_hda_intel          26181  0 [/COLOR][COLOR=Red](for onboard sound)
[/COLOR]snd_hda_codec          98034  2 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep               6429  1 snd_hda_codec
[COLOR=Red]snd_virtuoso           33289  0[/COLOR] [COLOR=Red](for Xonar DS)[/COLOR]
snd_oxygen_lib         30846  1 snd_virtuoso
snd_mpu401_uart         5980  1 snd_oxygen_lib
snd_rawmidi            18800  1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_device          5269  1 snd_rawmidi
snd_pcm                75735  4 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_oxygen_lib,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel
snd_page_alloc          7218  2 snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel
snd_timer              18935  1 snd_pcm
snd                    60189  11 snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_virtuoso,snd_oxygen_lib,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_seq_device
soundcore               5443  1 snd

I highlighted the two sound card stuff for ease of perusing. Post your output and we will soon have your Audigy running again.

 

[Urmas]

Hmmm... maybe:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=119219&p=658086&hilit=Audigy+2#p658086

 

[floppybootstomp]

Hmmm... maybe:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=119219&p=658086&hilit=Audigy+2#p658086

That worked - Success!

I had tried most other suggestions initially and discovered that there were in fact no ALSA drivers installed. Installed ALS/Gnome Mixer, turned on digital out and the Creative Audigy 2 Soundblaster now works in Mint 13 KDE.

Initially it was playing system sounds but would not play an audio CD from the optical drive, so re-booted and I can now play Audio CD's in a variety of players from the optical drive. Music files in various formats stored on hard disk playback ok as do DVD's in the optical drive and movie files from the hard disk, including mkv files.

All with audio, of course

I'm pleased that digital out is working as I intend to make another DAC to use with this machine.

Thanks to everybody who inputted here. Now to try and get that scanner working, I never did install those driver files, months back.

I also have a Hauppage TV card that works with Windows software installed in this machine, I seriously doubt that will ever work in Linux eh? But I'll have a search anyway...

 

[Urmas]

I also have a Hauppage TV card that works with Windows software installed in this machine, I seriously doubt that will ever work in Linux eh? But I'll have a search anyway...

Should work:

Native support under Linux started at kernel 2.6.19.

Your kernel is 3.something.

http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_WinTV-NOVA-T-500

 

[Abarbarian]

Urmas you is the biz.

I was going to post this,

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&p=140814

List of support TV tuner card on Linux mint and How to

by serbian_speed on Tue Feb 10, 2009 9:58 am
List of cards work with linux Mint
bttv card:

1. card=1 - MIRO PCTV
2. card=2 - Hauppauge (bt848)

 

[Urmas]

Urmas you is the biz.

Dat I be.

 

[Abarbarian]

Nice to see you back in the land of the living Urmas

 

[Quadophile]

Urmas,

You not only provided the solution but managed to keep Flops in the Linux fold

 

[Urmas]

Scanner:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=111710

iscan and iscan-data — HERE

(You are using 64-bit Mint, non? In that case, the packages you want are iscan_2.29.1-5~usb0.1.ltdl7_amd64.deb &
iscan-data_1.20.0-1_all.deb. There is also a manual — userg_revQ_j.pdf.)

Might not be necessary, but there is also a plugin package HERE —you want iscan-plugin-gt-x750_2.1.2-1_amd64.deb.

Installing order (methinks): 1. iscan-data, 2. iscan, (3. iscan-plugin).

 

[floppybootstomp]

Thanks for the info Urmas, will try that thing very soon.

As for the TV card, looked in Kaffeine and the card isn't seen there so attempted to install Myth TV which I've read has more success in detecting TV cards. However, Myth doesn't look to be in the repository and all my attempts to download and install have failed so getting the TV card to work looks unlikely but I will have a deeper search for a solution.

I'm not too bothered about the TV card not working, I never watch TV anyhow, only put it there for other folk as an alternative TV viewing location in my home and it works very well in Win XP.

But it would have felt good to see it working in Linux.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Have installed packages shown in pic below and 'iscan' is listed in Applications/Graphics and also in Gimp. That's 2 packages and the plug-in.

It won't open though, giving message 'cannot send files to scanner device' or similar.

Have I done something wrong? Omittted a package?

Scanner is plugged in, powered up and working in Win XP.

 

[Urmas]

Ah... troubleshooting.

This is gonna be a dialogue, not monologue.

Round one:

a) Scanner: open iscan as root:

In terminal:

$ sudo iscan

Worky/no worky? Report back. Also, if no worky, gimme the exact error message — e.g. "Could not send command to scanner".


b) TV card: again, in terminal:

$ dmesg | grep dvb

Gimme the output.

 

[bootneck02]

Love the dog Urmas