Searching around on the internet I think this question has been asked by
others but I cannot find an answer that I can understand so hopefully
someone here will be able to guide me into the light...
I am trying to get a media center built, based on SuSE 10.3, and am
running into a snag that is rather annoying that involves the sound card
that I want to use. I have the Creative Labs Audigy 4 Pro soundcard
which is what I want to use. I also have a Hauppauge 350 TV Tuner card
which I "think" has a sound chip on it called Conexant CX8801 and I
think this is somehow confusing things in SuSE.
About half the time when I boot up, it seems that the Creative Labs
Audigy 4 Pro sound card is not recognized and instead the Conexant
CX8801 sound chip is. This results in no sound coming from my system as
I do not hook up the speakers to the TV Tuner card. (I am wanting to use
the surround sound and Dolby features provided by the Creative Labs card)
I have been trying various ideas on how to solve this but it is very
confusing and I do not understand the sound architecture model very
well, but here is what I have observed....
Yast2 ALWAYS claims, under the Sound Card setup in the Hardware section,
that I only have 1 sound card model - SB Audigy at index 0 installed.
But it does NOT appear that Yast2 is really setting this sound card up
properly for me, and I will come back to this point in a moment to
clarify why I think so...
When I boot up this computer, if I do not hear the initialization sound
signature I know the boot up process failed to set up the SB Audigy card
properly and I can verify this by checking the Mixer settings in KMix as
it will be telling me that the current mixer is the Conexant CX8801. If
I open up the pull down list of Mixer options in KMix I will not see (so
cannot select) the Audigy 4 Pro soundcard. However, if after booting up
the computer I DO hear the initialization sound signature for SuSE's
signon, then KMix will also be showing that it has selected the Audigy 4
Pro card and it now also shows up in it's Mixer options pull down menu!
Also the KMix GUI will show a great many more slider controls for all
the features of the Audigy 4 Pro card which is what I need to control my
surround sound system!...
Getting back to Yast2, this same sort of problem shows up if I bring up
the Volume control settings menu from the "Other" pull down menu options
for the Sound card setup. If the boot up failed to setup the Audigy 4
Pro card properly then EVEN THOUGH Yast2 is claiming that my sound card
is the Audigy Pro, the volume control settings menu does NOT show all
the separate sliders and values for all the various controls of the
card. Instead it only shows a single slider which has no effect. But if
the boot up process did select the Audigy 4 Pro card correctly then the
volume controls in Yast2 > Hardware > Sounds > Other > Volume does show
all the controls for the card properly!
There is another aspect on this which is even more confusing. I have a
Harmon Kardon receiver/amplifier hooked up to this computer via a USB
cable (and HDMI cables) (I can control it via a Windows app to route
video and music to other computers in my house and I plan to write an
app for it, to run under Linux also, so that is why it is hooked up)
KMix is somehow able to "see" this USB receiver as it shows two
additional mixer menu options, something called "USB Audio CODEC" and
"USB AV Receiver". I haven't played with these settings yet as I am just
trying to get the basic stuff going first in order to up the wife
approval factor as quick as possible. ;-) If I disconnect the USB cable
to the Harmon Kardon then these two menu items for mixer options in KMix
go away as well.
Anywise as I said in the beginning I don't fully understand the sound
architecture model of SuSE yet and am still trying to learn. Why doesn't
the Conexant CX8801 or the USB devices show up as additional sound
devices in Yast2 when they show up in KMix? If Yast2 is recognizing that
I have an Audigy Pro card in my system and it is suppose to be
responsible for setting it up and configuring it during boot up, then
why is the Conexant CX8801 sound chip on the TV tuner card being
selected half the time instead of the Audigy Pro card? Is there a way
that I can "force" SuSE/YaST2/KDE/KMix to strictly use/setup the Audigy
4 Pro sound card and completely ignore the Conexant CX8801? If there is
some sort of random sound device selection process going on then why
isn't the USB sound devices getting selected some of the time? (NOT that
I want them to but it would be nice if at least things were consistent!)
BTW I also had a sound chip on my motherboard that initially was adding
to this confusing mix but I was able to get around it by disabling it in
the BIOS. That seems like a harsh approach but at least it worked as it
was ALWAYS being selected despite every effort I had made in YaST to
disable it... (YaST seems to always detect it and re-enable it on me! sigh.)
Another path I have traveled down was to go into the KDE Sound and
Multimedia setup and there I discovered additional layers to this
already confusing sound architecture. There I fooled around with
changing the audio device, selecting ALSA and OSS instead of using
Autodetect but that didn't help either so suspect those are higher
layers of the sound system and not important it trying to get the
fundamental sound card drivers working properly... (I have set it back
to Autodetect hoping that the KDE designers know what they are doing
better than I do!)
So I am now completely lost and confused...Any and all help will be most
welcomed! Thanks in advance and please forgive me if I misstated some of
this, I am NOT an expert on this stuff by any means...
Marc Chamberlin
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