From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jim Nelson Subject: Re: a sound problem solution? Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 16:32:27 -0500 Message-ID: <41E445EB.5080603@cwazy.co.uk> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-newbie-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: James Miller Cc: linux-newbie@vger.kernel.org James Miller wrote: > But, I wax philosophical. I finally decided to give in and listen to some > music through my computer. Mainly a satellite radio I've gotten to run > through it. I'm satisfied with the barest semblance of audio reproduction > these days: it sounds a little better than an old mono phonograph playing > 45's, which is fine. If I want better sound I'll visit a friend with a > real stereo or go to a live performance. So, all would be fine if I could > just keep my computer from suddenly ceasing to output sound for unknown > reasons. I'm not really interested in troubleshooting the sound server so > much as I am in a way of possibly resetting it short of rebooting the > machine. Is there a way to do this, i.e., to shutdown, then restart the > sound server to see if I can get the sound back without a reboot? > > A few details, in case it's helpful. This is Ubuntu, a Debian variant. > Sound hardware uses the snd_via82xx module--auto-detected and set up by > the OS on installation. Things I've noted that cause sound output to > cease: plugging/unplugging the speakers while the computer is running; > plugging a usb device into a hub mounted on top of the computer case; and > today I can't say that anything in particular caused this. The symptom is > an end to all sounds: no music will play, nor will system sounds. Only the > PC speaker remains operational. Sound comes back after a reboot. I'm > hoping there's a way to stop, then restart the sound server and that this > might resolve the problem when it occurs. I think this distro must use the > ALSA sound server, if I've understood correctly these technical details. > Everything these days uses ALSA - the old OSS system is deprecated (and for good reasons). You can rmmod/modprobe the driver, and that will work sometimes, but on-motherboard sound systems are notoriously crappy. > Any advice? Go back to using a stereo-type device for sound and just use > my computer for computing, perhaps? > Try Fedora. I'm using Fedora Core 2, with a custom-compiled kernel and a Sound Blaster Live, running the emu10k1 driver compiled in. The only problem I've ever had with it is when I went from a kernel module to a compiled-in driver - had to use the system-config-soundcard utility to reset everything. Once my brother gets his Mac, I'll be grabbing the E-MU 0404 he has in his Windows box - now *that's* a sound card... > James > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs > - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs