Sound very faint in Ubuntu 8l04 Hardy

[Paul Abrahams]

Until I installed Hardy Heron on this laptop, the sound worked fine. After installing HH 8.04, it didn't. At first I had no sound at all, but after switching from the i386 kernel to the generic kernel, as suggested by several bug reports, I started to get sound -- but so faint that I could barely hear it, even with the volume turned way up. Using Kubuntu Kcontrol I tried various possibilities: autodetect, Alsa, and OSS. With Alsa and autodetect I could hear nothing; with OSS I could hear it faintly.

According to the system information the installed driver is Type 10 Alsa emulation. The kernel is 2.6.24.16-generic. The device is Realtek ALC883.

Lots of people are reporting no sound under HH, but so far I have seen no reports of faint sound.

[Paul Abrahams (abrahams)]

This report should, of course, have referred to Ubuntu 8.04, not Ubuntu 8104. Just a bit of fat-fingered typing.

[Michael Olberg (michael-olberg)]

I am having the same problem on a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop (running the same kernel) with a

$ lspci
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)

$ head -n 5 /proc/asound/card0/codec#0
Codec: Conexant ID 2c06
Address: 0
Vendor Id: 0x14f12c06
Subsystem Id: 0x14f1000f
Revision Id: 0x100000

Sound works just fine with ubuntu 7.10, so I am glad I did not do an upgrade, yet, but installed 8.04 on an extra partition.

[Paul Abrahams (abrahams)]

On Wednesday 30 April 2008 7:32:34 am Michael Olberg wrote:
> I am having the same problem on a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop (running the
> same kernel) with a
>
> $ lspci
> 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio
> Controller (rev 02)
>
> $ head -n 5 /proc/asound/card0/codec#0
> Codec: Conexant ID 2c06
> Address: 0
> Vendor Id: 0x14f12c06
> Subsystem Id: 0x14f1000f
> Revision Id: 0x100000
>
> Sound works just fine with ubuntu 7.10, so I am glad I did not do an
> upgrade, yet, but installed 8.04 on an extra partition.

I found the problem: the upgrade changed the mixer settings. Start the
mixer, crank up everything in sight, and see if that helps (if it doesn't
blast your ears off). Let me know if that helps.

I suppose I should post something about this.

Paul

[Paul Abrahams (abrahams)]

I think there really is a bug here, though one that's more puzzling than fatal. The mixer settings should be preserved over the upgrade.

[Michael Olberg (michael-olberg)]

Thanks, I had already played with the master and pcm setting but had overlooked the front control.
Seems ok now.
I did try to simply restore my old settings from gutsy (its root being mounted on /mnt) via alsactl, but that didn't work:

> sudo alsactl -f /mnt/var/lib/alsa/asound.state restore
alsactl: set_control:989: warning: name mismatch (Digital Input Source/IEC958 Playback Con Mask) for control #1
alsactl: set_control:991: warning: index mismatch (0/0) for control #1
alsactl: set_control:993: failed to obtain info for control #1 (Operation not permitted)

[Susan Cragin (susancragin)]

I have the same problem on an asus. Very weak sound. There is no volume knob on my machine. All controls turned all the way up. Incoming sound through microphone is also poor.

[Susan Cragin (susancragin)]

I have the same problem on an asus. Very weak sound. There is no volume knob on my machine. All controls turned all the way up. Incoming sound through microphone is also poor.

[Paul Abrahams (abrahams)]

Susan, are you sure you found all the settings? They are on two separate pages of kmix, I believe. At first I only found the first page.

I have no knowledge about all this beyond what my own experience was.

[Susan Cragin (susancragin)]

oops. did non-verbose lspci.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please add the output requested in the Reporting Sound Bugs section of https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingSoundProblems as separate attachments? Thanks in advance.

[Michael Olberg (michael-olberg)]

Hi Brian,

Sound worked fine in the end, if I remember correctly I had just
overlooked a mixer setting. The bug is closed from my point of view.

Unfortunately, I can't provide the info you request. The 8.04
installation was on a "experimental" partition (my main system is still
on 7.10) and in the mean time I tried to upgrade hardy to intrepid. I
say "tried" because that system is totally broken right now. But that's
another story ...

cheers,
Michael

On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 21:42 +0000, Brian Murray wrote:
> Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
> Ubuntu better. Could you please add the output requested in the
> Reporting Sound Bugs section of
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingSoundProblems as separate attachments?
> Thanks in advance.
>
> ** Changed in: linux (Ubuntu)
> Sourcepackagename: None => linux
> Status: New => Incomplete
>

[Susan Cragin (susancragin)]

The sound has gotten louder on my laptop, and I think that changes in the alsa package relative to hda-intel soundcards are to be thanked.
Having said that, the sound is still very much sub-par. I have to turn my volume on "Master" and "Front" all the way to 100 to be able to hear and understand the words to a simple song on YouTube, such as the Seekers' "Another You."
Sound quality is still poorer, and volume lower, than it was on my (now-defunct) Windows partition.
I will do testing tomorrow.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

The Ubuntu Kernel Team is planning to move to the 2.6.27 kernel for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. As a result, the kernel team would appreciate it if you could please test this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. There are one of two ways you should be able to test:

1) If you are comfortable installing packages on your own, the linux-image-2.6.27-* package is currently available for you to install and test.

--or--

2) The upcoming Alpha5 for Intrepid Ibex 8.10 will contain this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. Alpha5 is set to be released Thursday Sept 4. Please watch http://www.ubuntu.com/testing for Alpha5 to be announced. You should then be able to test via a LiveCD.

Please let us know immediately if this newer 2.6.27 kernel resolves the bug reported here or if the issue remains. More importantly, please open a new bug report for each new bug/regression introduced by the 2.6.27 kernel and tag the bug report with 'linux-2.6.27'. Also, please specifically note if the issue does or does not appear in the 2.6.26 kernel. Thanks again, we really appreicate your help and feedback.

[Susan Cragin (susancragin)]

This is still a problem for me. Checked today with 2.6.27-2. Recording is at a lower level, and with poorer quality, than it should be. (Recorded sample is faint and fuzzy.)
Can barely hear YouTube video with all controls turned all the way up.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi Susan,

It seems you have a different audio card than what was reported here. So even though you may be experiencing the same symptoms as what was reported here it really should be filed as a separate bug for now. It seems Paul, the original bug reporter, has even commented this was an issue with mixer settings. For now I'm going to close this against the kernel. Thanks.