RH9 Linux, Asus P4PE: No sound!

[Vikas Agnihotri]

I installed RH9 (Shrike) on a Asus P4PE motherboard-based system. The P4PE
has the onboard sound chip with the AC97 codec (Intel 82801DB ACH4).

I launched KDE's Sound and Multimedia, Souncard detection and it properly
detected the soundcard (i810_audio), but when I click the the Play test
sound button, nothing comes out of the speakers.

My (stereo) speakers are connected to each other and have just one jack. I
connected this jack to the line-out (green) on the P4PE back-panel. Is this
right? Or is it supposed to go into the pink (mic) connector?

Just for kicks, I installed the www.opensound.com drivers and it worked! I
could hear the /usr/local/lib/osstest sound thru the speakers!

But, of course, www.opensound.com is a eval version and it expired shortly
so I uninstalled it.

Isnt the RH9 kernel (2.4.20-8) supposed to support the AC97 onboard sound?

Anyway, I proceeded to download the latest ALSA stuff from
http://freshrpms.net and followed the instructions there to install.

Still no go. No errors in 'dmesg' during boot or when I 'play something.au'
but the speakers are silent!

Actually, just after booting when I look at 'dmesg' it doesnt have any
sound stuff at all, but 'lsmod' does show the snd-* modules and soundcore.
Is this possible?

Yes, I did unmute the MIC and Headphone using 'amixer', anything else I
need to unmute?

I am getting really frustrated. So close (with the opensound.com eval
drivers) and yet so far!

Is P4PE onboard sound supposed to work with vanilla RH9? Do I even need to
mess with the ALSA drivers?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

 

[Yossarian]

I installed RH9 (Shrike) on a Asus P4PE motherboard-based system. The P4PE
has the onboard sound chip with the AC97 codec (Intel 82801DB ACH4).

I launched KDE's Sound and Multimedia, Souncard detection and it properly
detected the soundcard (i810_audio), but when I click the the Play test
sound button, nothing comes out of the speakers.

My (stereo) speakers are connected to each other and have just one jack. I
connected this jack to the line-out (green) on the P4PE back-panel. Is this
right? Or is it supposed to go into the pink (mic) connector?

Just for kicks, I installed the www.opensound.com drivers and it worked! I
could hear the /usr/local/lib/osstest sound thru the speakers!

But, of course, www.opensound.com is a eval version and it expired shortly
so I uninstalled it.

Isnt the RH9 kernel (2.4.20-8) supposed to support the AC97 onboard sound?

Anyway, I proceeded to download the latest ALSA stuff from
http://freshrpms.net and followed the instructions there to install.

Still no go. No errors in 'dmesg' during boot or when I 'play something.au'
but the speakers are silent!

Actually, just after booting when I look at 'dmesg' it doesnt have any
sound stuff at all, but 'lsmod' does show the snd-* modules and soundcore.
Is this possible?

Yes, I did unmute the MIC and Headphone using 'amixer', anything else I
need to unmute?

I am getting really frustrated. So close (with the opensound.com eval
drivers) and yet so far!

Is P4PE onboard sound supposed to work with vanilla RH9? Do I even need to
mess with the ALSA drivers?

Sometimes mike out works when speaker out doesn't. Be careful don't blow it
out with the wrong plug!

Yossarian

 

[kurt]

Yes, I did unmute the MIC and Headphone using 'amixer', anything else I
need to unmute?

For my RH8/KDE install I count at least four volume controls that have
to be turned up in order to get anything from the speakers when playing
a CD:

1. On the speakers
2. On the kscd CD player panel (software) that I use
3. Gnome Volume Control
4. KDE sound mixer (kmix ?)

The latter two are in the RH menu under "Sound & Video". I just turn
everything up all the way except the Gnome Volume Control and that's the
only one I adjust.

I suppose I should uninstall kmix, but since it ain't broke ...

HTH

 

[tweester]

For my RH8/KDE install I count at least four volume controls that have
to be turned up in order to get anything from the speakers when playing
a CD:

1. On the speakers
2. On the kscd CD player panel (software) that I use
3. Gnome Volume Control
4. KDE sound mixer (kmix ?)

The latter two are in the RH menu under "Sound & Video". I just turn
everything up all the way except the Gnome Volume Control and that's the
only one I adjust.

I suppose I should uninstall kmix, but since it ain't broke ...

HTH

You must connect audio-box/amplifiers to the pink connector of the ON-board
audio card.
Linux enable 5.1 and audio output is redirect to the pink connector.
Bye from Italy.

 

[Keith Clark]

Does anyone besides me hear obvious distortion if you turn up the volume
controls all the way and just use the Gnome volume control?

I'm using a Soundblaster PCI 128 if that matters...

--Keith

 

[Robert Pendell]

I installed RH9 (Shrike) on a Asus P4PE motherboard-based system. The
P4PE has the onboard sound chip with the AC97 codec (Intel 82801DB ACH4).

I launched KDE's Sound and Multimedia, Souncard detection and it
properly detected the soundcard (i810_audio), but when I click the the
Play test sound button, nothing comes out of the speakers.

My (stereo) speakers are connected to each other and have just one jack.
I connected this jack to the line-out (green) on the P4PE back-panel. Is
this right? Or is it supposed to go into the pink (mic) connector?

Just for kicks, I installed the www.opensound.com drivers and it worked!
I could hear the /usr/local/lib/osstest sound thru the speakers!

But, of course, www.opensound.com is a eval version and it expired
shortly so I uninstalled it.

Isnt the RH9 kernel (2.4.20-8) supposed to support the AC97 onboard sound?

Anyway, I proceeded to download the latest ALSA stuff from
http://freshrpms.net and followed the instructions there to install.

Still no go. No errors in 'dmesg' during boot or when I 'play
something.au' but the speakers are silent!

Actually, just after booting when I look at 'dmesg' it doesnt have any
sound stuff at all, but 'lsmod' does show the snd-* modules and
soundcore. Is this possible?

Yes, I did unmute the MIC and Headphone using 'amixer', anything else I
need to unmute?

I am getting really frustrated. So close (with the opensound.com eval
drivers) and yet so far!

Is P4PE onboard sound supposed to work with vanilla RH9? Do I even need
to mess with the ALSA drivers?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

I have been able to get the that soundchip to work with the default
supplied drivers in RH9 but of-course, they appear to not support
everything. I had to increase the volume level to hear anything at all.
I have replaced the drivers with the ALSA drivers rpm files supplied
at http://www.freshrpms.net. Try that. Follow their instructions and
they will refer you back to http://www.alsa-project.org a couple of
placed but follow it and it will work. You will need to recompile the
kernel module since there is none for 2.40.20-8 but that isn't really a
big deal. Make sure you do it as root.

 

[Martin]

At least with Mandrake 9.1, you need to plug the speakers into the mic
socket. Not as daft as it sounds, as when the AC97 is used for 5.1
sound in Windows, you use all the jacks for outputs...

Regards

Martin