I emerged the latest updates of portage and binutils recently, and first noticed that alsa-tools didn't compile. This was probably a problem associated with the package, but sometime after this, I was unable to mute the "Digital Output" channel on my SoundBlaster Live card. This causes the speakers to put out high levels of static (since I'm using analog speakers). I recompiled alsa-driver either just before or after the sound started messing up. Whatever was the case, I tried recompiling a few certain low-level packages, thinking it was probably some sort of binary incompatibility. These were modutils, module-init-tools, [alsa tools, alsa-lib, alsa-driver, alsa-util, alsa-oss, all ~x86-- version 0.9.6], the kernel (2.4.21-ac1). When this didn't work, I tried upgrading to the latest version available of gcc (gcc-3.3.1-r1), and repeating the above steps. I tried reemerging an older version of binutils (binutils-2.13.90.0.18.ebuild) hoping that that was the one I had before I did the update (i dont' remember if that was it, but I do remember an "18" in the version number). That still didn't work. I tried the 2.6 kernel. Nope. I'm at the end of my wits now. The card does work in windows, and it does work with CDs (CDs aren't affected by the forementioned digital-jack problem). I was also able to reproduce the problem with a friend's SB Live card. Thus, I know that the problem is specific to my linux setup, and that it is specifically the digital output jack on my soundblaster live card. I have been able to reproduce this problem with everything from mpg321 to noatun and xmms. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 0. Get a system with an SB Live card, with digital output jack. 1. Emerge latest versions of binutils and portage 2. Emerge alsa-tools and alsa-driver Actual Results: Get lots of static on speakers. Portage 2.0.49-r3 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.3.1, glibc-2.3.2-r1, 2.4.21-ac1) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.21-ac1 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1700MHz ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-march=pentium4 -O2 -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium4 -O2 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="sandbox ccache autoaddcvs" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j1" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/var/portage/tree" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 foomaticdb mad pdflib quicktime slang opengl X kde gtk gnome alsa afs aalib apm arts avi berkdb bonobo cdr cjk crypt cups dga doc dvd esd evo gd gdbm ggi gif gphoto2 gpm gtk2 gtkhtml imap imlib innodb ipv6 java jpeg junit kerberos lcms ldap leim libg++ libwww mbox mikmod mmx motif mozilla mpeg mule mysql ncurses nls odbc oggvorbis oss esound pam pda perl pic plotutils png postgres python qt qtmt readline samba sasl scanner sdl slp snmp spell sse ssl svga tcltk tcpd tetex tiff truetype wmf xml xml2 xmms xv zeo zlib encode guile flash"
OK, FALSE ALARM!!! Turns out a friend maxxed out the volume channels on my card. That was producing all the static. Good fucking grief. I've spent the last THREE DAYS recompiling because of volume sliders? OK. Whoever's reading this is going to learn a nifty lesson at my expense..
ok ;)
