[pulseaudio-discuss] 2 sound devices, one mostly won't play, but works

[Patrick Shirkey]

On 03/29/2011 06:52 PM, Doug wrote:
> On 03/29/2011 02:39 AM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
>> On 03/29/2011 04:53 PM, Doug wrote:
>>> On 03/29/2011 01:26 AM, Doug wrote:
>>>
>>> Here I am again: Now the top sliders control the volume on the 
>>> bottom port.  I don't know shat I did.  I still can't get any sound 
>>> out of the
>>> speaker connected to the top port, but I can get the bonging noise 
>>> on the headphones of the second port.  Actually, with all this
>>> confusion, I really don't know which port is connected to what, 
>>> since now the top port seems to be connected to the headphones,
>>>
>>> Do you know if anyone using PCLOS has ever gotten this thing to work?
>>>
>>> --doug
>>>
>>>
>>
>> You might want to try with alsamixer
>>
>> It may be that your settings have become confused.
>>
>> You can drop an .asoundrc file into your home folder for testing.
>>
>> You may also get somewhere with   "/etc/alsa/pulse-default.conf"
>>
>>
>> Cheers.
>>
> All right.  I managed to get two sound sources running at the same 
> time (thru one card) and couldn't stop the one, so I shut the machine
> down (gracefully) and when I rebooted and loaded a radio station, it 
> came out the MOBO device into the speakers.  I looked up
> /usr/bin/alsamixer.gui and it seems to only know the MOBO device, and 
> only the master has any effect on the volume.  The panel
> volume control works again.  I conclude that PA is not working at all 
> right now.  There is no file pulse-default.conf anywhere on the
> machine.  All the alsa files in /usr/bin as one might expect, altho 
> alsamixer.gui puts a drawing out with a zillion i/o keys. There is
> no .asound* on the machine.
>
> Unfortunately, I'm a retired hardware engineer, and I'm not all that 
> good with software.  I sort of know how to find things on the machine,
> and I know some _very basic_ bash programming, and I can edit files if 
> I know what to put in them.  I was always told by the software
> guys not to do it in hardware if it could be done in software, but if 
> Radio Shack still had the parts, I would be building a switch about now.
> There's DigiKey, of course. . . .
>
> It's almost 4AM here.  I give up for the night.
>

At least you are making progress :-)

alsamixer -c0
alsamixer -c1

Will let you see the settings for each card at alsamixer level.

It does sound like your system has something not quite right with it's 
pulseaudio setup though.

Can you tell us which version of pa you are using?

pulseaudio --version


Cheers.

-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd.