Sound / Audio not working after upgrade from Fedora 14 to Fedora 15 (help!)

[clolsonus]

Hi,

I've been googling and hunting around the forum here for the last 24 hours trying every possible combination of keywords I can think of and so far haven't come up with any solutions.

My audio worked completely perfectly running Fedora 14. I upgraded to Fedora 15 and discovered my audio no longer worked. As far as I know I didn't change anything. I do hear random pops and clicks from my speakers every few seconds. It's a bummer because this worked out of the box on Fedora 14 without any screwing around, and now it's totally broken in fedora 15. Everything else about my upgrade has been going pretty well, but life without sound is not nearly as fun and it's frustrating to have something not work that used to work just fine.

Here is some information and things I've tried:

- Just for grins I booted from the Fedora 15 live CD and observe the exact same issue as I see when I boot from my HD (just pops and clicks out of the audio.)
- motherboard: ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 (using onboard audio)
- lspci reports: 00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) (rev 40)
- cat /proc/asound/card0/codec#0 | grep -i codec reports: Codec: Realtek ALC892 (this is what the motherboard manual lists as the audio hardware.)
- I've run pavumeter as some have suggested and I see outputs on both left/right channels when audio is playing (but still hear nothing but clicks and pops.)
- I've run "alsamixer -c 0" and verified all my levels are maxed out.
- I've opened up the sound settings dialog box and made sure the correct hardware device is selected, tried different profiles, tested left/right speakers, still no progress at all.
- I know I have the speakers on and plugged into the correct output jack, but just for fun I tried plugging the speakers into each of the other possible jacks, but that didn't help.

- lsmod (fedora 15) reports:
$ lsmod | grep snd
snd_hda_codec_hdmi 22998 4
snd_hda_codec_realtek 325262 1
snd_hda_intel 23694 1
snd_hda_codec 80822 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_i ntel
snd_hwdep 6368 1 snd_hda_codec
snd_seq 52438 0
snd_seq_device 6001 1 snd_seq
snd_pcm 78484 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_timer 19593 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd 62686 11 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_i ntel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_seq,snd_seq_devic e,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 6299 1 snd
snd_page_alloc 7431 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm

$ dmesg | grep sound
[ 11.792101] ALSA sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c:1528: SKU: Nid=0x1d sku_cfg=0x4005e601
[ 11.792104] ALSA sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c:1530: SKU: port_connectivity=0x1
[ 11.792106] ALSA sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c:1531: SKU: enable_pcbeep=0x0
[ 11.792107] ALSA sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c:1532: SKU: check_sum=0x00000005
[ 11.792109] ALSA sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c:1533: SKU: customization=0x000000e6
[ 11.792111] ALSA sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c:1534: SKU: external_amp=0x0
[ 11.792113] ALSA sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c:1535: SKU: platform_type=0x0
[ 11.792114] ALSA sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c:1536: SKU: swap=0x0
[ 11.792116] ALSA sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c:1537: SKU: override=0x1
[ 11.792289] ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:4633: autoconfig: line_outs=4 (0x14/0x15/0x16/0x17/0x0)
[ 11.792292] ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:4637: speaker_outs=0 (0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
[ 11.792294] ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:4641: hp_outs=1 (0x1b/0x0/0x0/0x0/0x0)
[ 11.792296] ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:4642: mono: mono_out=0x0
[ 11.792298] ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:4645: dig-out=0x11/0x1e
[ 11.792299] ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:4646: inputs:
[ 11.792301] ALSA sound/pci/hda/hda_codec.c:4652:
[ 11.794428] ALSA sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c:1585: realtek: No valid SSID, checking pincfg 0x4005e601 for NID 0x1d
[ 11.794431] ALSA sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c:1601: realtek: Enabling init ASM_ID=0xe601 CODEC_ID=10ec0892
[ 11.800444] input: HDA ATI SB Headphone as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.2/sound/card0/input5

Can anyone offer any tips or hints? I'm really bummed out to not have my audio working any more with the latest release. :-(

Thanks!

Curt.

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by clolsonus

- I've run pavumeter as some have suggested and I see outputs on both left/right channels when audio is playing (but still hear nothing but clicks and pops.)

I'm not familiar with pavumeter.

What some of us recommend is to try installing pulse audio volume control (pavucontrol) and then tune the configuration, output devices, and playback for the multimedia audio applications you are trying to run (and for your hardware audio device).

[clolsonus]

I'm running pavucontrol now, but I don't see that it gives me options that I can't already set with the default sound control panel. Is there something specific I should look for? I'm still just getting a few random clicks and pops as my sound ouptut

For instance, when I look at the "Output Devices" tab, things appear to be configured reasonably, and I see a level meter in motion when I play a song through rhythmbox. When the song stops the level meter drops to zero.

Thanks,

Curt.

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by clolsonus

I'm running pavucontrol now, but I don't see that it gives me options that I can't already set with the default sound control panel. Is there something specific I should look for? I'm still just getting a few random clicks and pops as my sound ouptut

For instance, when I look at the "Output Devices" tab, things appear to be configured reasonably, and I see a level meter in motion when I play a song through rhythmbox. When the song stops the level meter drops to zero.

In pavucontrol, in the 'configuration' tab there are different 'profiles' one can select. Some work, some don't. Worst comes to worst you can try a different profile.

In pavucontrol, in the 'input devices' tab it is imho best when tuning to SHOW 'all input devices'. You should be able to control your audio there and ensure nothing is muted.

In pavucontrol, in the 'playback' tab it is imho best when tuning to SHOW 'all streams'. When playing audio from an application, you should set the application to play from the appropriate audio device (which is important if one has more than one audio device).

[clolsonus]

Hi oldcpu,

I really appreciate you replying since no one else has, but I'm pretty sure this isn't just a pulseaudio misconfiguration issue.

If I had the wrong audio device selected, I would expect no sound at all. Similarly, if I had the levels wrong or the volume off, I'd also expect no sound. But instead, I get a short click or pop when a sound should be played.

It really feels more like a bug snuck into the driver, or as the driver was expanded to detect more or newer hardware devices, it is now mis-detecting my hardware and driving it incorrectly.

It's certainly possible I could have overlooked something stupid, but I've been running linux machines since the early 90's (and I realize that doesn't necessarily mean I can do anything useful with linux on any particular day) but I'm not just a fresh newbie who got ahold of his first linux dvd. I did put in several hours of effort before posting to try to eliminate the obvious stuff.

Is there a way to override the hardware auto-detection and force a particular mode for particular hardware? Is there a place that lists what the driver options are?

As I said before, audio was working perfecting in Fedora 14. All I did was run preupgrade, reboot, install the pacakges, reboot, and everything else came up and worked except for the audio which didn't. I didn't change any of the physical configuration.

Guess I'll keep at it here and if I come across a solution or get more information, I'll post it.

Thanks,

Curt.

---------- Post added at 07:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:11 PM ----------

I found a post in another forum that seems to match my issue more than any other description I've been able to find.

http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?31,1...ate=head%3F%3F

The common thread here might be the 2.6.38 kernel? This thread didn't have a solution yet though. The question is: can we find a work around to get sound working again? Or am I SOL. Of course I just gave away my two old sound blaster cards a couple weeks ago because I figured I'd never need them again.

---------- Post added at 07:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:00 PM ----------

Ok, I have sound again. Here is the trick: I completely power cycled my machine. Something must have gotten wedged in the hardware. Googling around, I saw some references to these same symptoms with the same motherboard for someone on windows (no sound, just periodic pops and clicks.) A complete power cycle was one thing I hadn't tried yet. I did that and everything came back and is working now.

Sorry for the noise and thanks to oldcpu for giving me a few things to try.

I am now a 100% happy Fedora 15 upgraded user. :-)

Thanks,

Curt.

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by clolsonus

I am now a 100% happy Fedora 15 upgraded user. :-)

Great news ! Glad to read it.