Multiple sound cards, selected at random?

[Armor Gnome]

Mid-reinstall with the snap listed above and I am still skipping av-wizard and going straight to orbiter/home wizard with Sarah.  It will be a while before I can hop on IRC but this is the ATI Radeon being recognized, and the flgrx driver loaded on its own.  Let me know what logs you might need.

I messed up somewhere else and didn't get the boot loader off the install USB and onto the HDD.  Let me burn to plastic and give you my results once I am booting normally.

[Armor Gnome]

My evenings have been pretty busy lately L3mce and last night when I finally made time my ISP went down.  Sorry about that.

After reinstalling with the latest snapshot and running your replacement utils.sh my video driver is properly loaded and I no longer resort to flgrx.  However since that fix I have completely lost audio and am following along with several threads about audio trying to discern what the issue is.  The original issue was sound on an MD jumping output ports randomly, there is no MD yet in this install and I have no sound output on the core. 

Because all of my media was on a separate drive I have nothing to loose by breaking this install a few times until I can report what the solution was.  I am still just very confused with the manual entries necessary now, in one thread I need to modify AlternateSoundCards (which doesnt exist), in another I need to create a virtual soundcard with child devices, etc. 

Physically the card says "Audigy" so in web-admin I input that under soundcard
KDE calls it a CA106 but that device template only appears to have 2 outs and 1 in, where my card has 3 out and 1 in?

The files that will be most useful for me to look for, and ultimately help L3top I believe are:

/etc/pluto.conf
/usr/pluto/bin/asound.conf
/usr/pluto/bin/alsa/?

[phenigma]

Armorgnome,

No need to create any virtual sound card devices for Media Director audio/video, only if you want to use a multichannel analog sound card for multiple squeezeslaves.

J.

[Armor Gnome]

I am still quite confused by this terminology.  The living room MD has the green onboard audio connector going to my tv via 3.5 jack.  The other 5 jacks onboard are not connected to anything.

This MD also has 3 Sound Blaster PCI cards which each have four 3.5 jacks, also not connected to anything.

Is this a multi-channel analog setup?

[phenigma]

For the time being multichannel sound cards could be any sound card that is not your MDs primary sound device.  So, your onboard sound card connected to your TV is not currently considered a multichannel sound card (as far as our DeviceTemplates are concerned).

The 3 SoundBlasters could each be a created as multichannel sound cards.  Depending on the number of actual outputs on the cards they could provide from 1 to 4 stereo outputs each.  So you would then create stereo virtual cards as children of the multichannel card.  Then you could create squeezeslave devices in your device tree that point to these virtual sound cards.  So, you could run anywhere from 4 to 12 different squeezeslaves with your 3 SoundBlaster cards.  With very little configuration required.

I hope that helps to explain things.  Let me know if you need any assistance.

J.

[totallymaxed]

Armorgnome,

No need to create any virtual sound card devices for Media Director audio/video, only if you want to use a multichannel analog sound card for multiple squeezeslaves.

J.

If you only have a 5.1 card in your NC or MD and you only want to use stereo audio for your MD audio/video then virtualising your physical sound card is the way to go as it will enable you to have in addition to the stereo audio for your MD two additional stereo outputs for use with Squeezeslaves. This makes much better use of your physical sound card and essentially gets you 'something for nothing' :-)

All the best

Andrew

[l3mce]

I think I finally understand the root of this issue ArmorGnome.

Try this... see if you have similar results.
http://pastebin.com/bsNeJVML

I have... no idea how I am going to go about fixing that... that is alsa.

[phenigma]

We can specifify card orders for detection using modprobe.  This will take some playing and testing.  Will be a 1204 addition.  We can control card detection order and 'reserve' card IDs for specific devices.  That way when USB devices plug in/out they will always receive the same card id.

J.

[l3mce]

For now... I have dumped this into 1004 trunk. Armorgnome, please replace your /usr/pluto/bin/AVWizard_Run.sh with this
http://svn.linuxmce.org/trac.cgi/export/27234/trunk/src/AVWizard/scripts/AVWizard_Run.sh

reboot to AVWizard, finish, then please pastebin your /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

Thanks!

This goes for anyone with more than 2 soundcards listed in aplay -l

[Armor Gnome]

The primer is drying now on my new AV/server rack.  Until that is finished I really can't tear down more equipment to re-add cards until I am putting things back in their ultimate home.  Sparing you the details here, I have dedecated miscellaneous LMCE time ahead of that MD necessary to keep the household happy.  Within the week for sure!

[Marie.O]

For now... I have dumped this into 1004 trunk.

There is no such thing as a 1004 trunk. Trunk has nothing to do with 1004, if you want fixes for 1004 you should do it in branch 1004

[l3mce]

I am using trunk as a testing repo... as prescribed. Once I know things work I will move them into repo. This, for instance, is the wrong approach.

I need to create udev rules, as currently if you have 5 of the same sound cards, this will not prevent slot flopping.

[l3mce]

AG  try this

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wget -P /usr/pluto/bin http://svn.linuxmce.org/trac.cgi/export/27256/people/l3mce/SetCardRules
chmod +x /usr/pluto/bin/SetCardRules
Then you can either run /usr/pluto/bin/SetCardRules or add that line to a0start_avwizard after CheckVideoDriver
This will run every boot obviously, and if a change is detected in cards, it will cement the new structure as they are added/removed. If you remove the card you have chosen previously in avwiz, avwiz will have to be run again... unless it was replaced with the same thing in the same physical slot.

[Armor Gnome]

I made some time today to test out the multiple sound card settings during general cleaning and organizing (didn't make it to either of those).

Prior to doing any changes today I did a lot of reading so I could get familiar with the terminology.  Mutliple channel audio I understand now as my receiver has inputs for that called conveniently "multi channel."

Here was the tested hardware and various configuration settings I attempted:

Intel HD (AC988?) onboard audio, 7.1+2 support - the +2 was not tested as that requires using the front panel header and somehow creates a separate zone of output.  Having read that in the mobo manual however I am curious about the possible necessity to create a virtual soundcard when this chipset is present?
PCI Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 x2
S/PDIF 3-pin mobo header connected to a SY-AUDI001 s/pdif extension plate  (found the pinouts online which with my mobo supply the 5V needed for TOSLINK and COAX digital)

No sound whatsoever in AV WIZARD

intel analog (with 3.5mm jack in all onboard ports one at a time)
intel digital coax
intel digital optical
hdmi

live analog (again testing each 3.5 port, I have the soundblaster pinout to connect the s/pdif but did not connect it)
live coax
live optical
live hdmi

live1 analog
live1 coax
live1 optical

The only configuration that made any noise whatsoever during AVWizard was when using the s/pdif setting of the intel card I heard the sub 'thud' every 10 seconds or so.  This came through during boot even so I doubt it had to do with ALSA or AVWizard attempting to play audio.  Perhaps during either a modprobe or my mobo checking for a connection signal a few bits are sent via s/pdif?

Just to rule out additional failure points in my signal I did connect various other devices to my receivers inputs and they played fine. IE, after I failed to get audio via S/PDIF optical from LMCE on optical1 of my receiver I hooked my PS3 up to optical1 and it played fine.

[l3mce]

I need to see

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tail -9 /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf; cat /etc/udev/rules.d/85-linuxmce-audio.rules
I will have a new file tonight or tomorrow.