Bug 236860 – Sound from anything other than mplayer will not play

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

[Description Nathan Kaun 2008-09-06 14:11:28 UTC]

I've recently installed gentoo on nVidia nForce3 250Gb board. It has a built in AC'97 Audio Controller with SPDIF output. I followed the Gentoo Linux ALSA Guide (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/alsa-guide.xml) after which speaker-test produced no sound (no errors either though). I emerged madplay and mplayer, they also played no sound. 

I read that to get digital sound to work, this was required in your .asoundrc:
pcm.!default {
       type hw
       card 0
       device 2
}
After adding that mplayer could play sound excellently, however, speaker-test would give this error:
Channels count (1) not available for playbacks: Invalid argument
Setting of hwparams failed: Invalid argument


There's nothing obviously wrong in dmesg or any other log file. 
The volume is all the way up for everything. 
I am definitely in the audio group.
Feel free to see my discussion in the genoo forum at http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-704854-highlight-.html if I've left anything out of here.

Reproducible: Always




lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb Host Bridge (rev a1)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb LPC Bridge (rev a2)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce 250Gb PCI System Management (rev a1)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK8S USB Controller (rev a1)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK8S USB Controller (rev a1)
00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a2)
00:05.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation CK8S Ethernet Controller (rev a2)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a1)
00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK8S Parallel ATA Controller (v2.5) (rev a2)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK8S Serial ATA Controller (v2.5) (rev a2)
00:0a.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK8S Serial ATA Controller (v2.5) (rev a2)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb AGP Host to PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb PCI-to-PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 AQ [Radeon 9600]
01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 AQ [Radeon 9600] (Secondary)
02:06.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80)
02:08.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 SE] (rev 01)
02:08.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 SE] (Secondary) (rev 01)
02:09.0 Ethernet controller: ADMtek NC100 Network Everywhere Fast Ethernet 10/100 (rev 11)

uname -a
Linux donny 2.6.25-gentoo-r7 #9 SMP Tue Aug 19 23:35:01 EDT 2008 i686 AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3100+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

$ aplay -L
default:CARD=CK8S
    NVidia CK8S, NVidia CK8S
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=CK8S,DEV=0
    NVidia CK8S, NVidia CK8S
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=CK8S,DEV=0
    NVidia CK8S, NVidia CK8S
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=CK8S,DEV=0
    NVidia CK8S, NVidia CK8S
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=CK8S,DEV=0
    NVidia CK8S, NVidia CK8S
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=CK8S,DEV=0
    NVidia CK8S, NVidia CK8S
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)

[Comment 1 Wormo (RETIRED) 2008-09-06 18:57:31 UTC]

I suspect this is a configuration problem rather than an actual bug, but you are in good hands with beandog on the forum -- he is one of the alsa devs. If he (or another alsa dev) determines it is a config problem, he'll probably close this bug as "invalid". Don't be alarmed, it just means the forum thread is the right place to continue troubleshooting.