Ubuntu

undependable audio source

Asked by Brian Burns

Hi,
Although I don't think that my problem is all that amazing, I am stumped as I am completely new to Linux and Ubuntu.
My problem is that I have no sound - usually. I had sound yesterday coming from my soundblaster card, but today I had to switch jacks to get sound (I switched to the motherboard on-board sound. I would really like the sound to just come out of the soundblaster card without exception.
I've read the sound trouble-shooting faq, but the part that I need to be able to understand is incomprehensible to me. I believe that there's a part that describes how to tell the system to recognize certain devices first, but I don't understand that part.
Here's a link to my set-up: http://pastebin.ca/812567

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Brian

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vlowther
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Best vlowther (victor-lowther) said : 		#1

If you only want to use the Live card for sound, you can blacklist the onboard sound. To do that:

1: Click Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal
   A Terminal window will open.

2: In the terminal, type "sudo -s" without the quotation marks and press Enter.
   You will be prompted for your password. Enter it -- we need to run as the superuser (root) for the next command.
   If you entered your password correctly, the last character of the terminal prompt should change from a '$' to a '#'.

3: After you have sucessfully gotten to a root prompt, type "echo blacklist snd_intel8x0 >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist" without the quotes.
   After you have made sure that the command you typed exactly matches the above one on quotes, press Enter.
   This command adds the line "blacklist snd_intel8x0" to the end of the module blacklist.

4: You should come back to a prompt with no error message. Close the terminal window and shut your system down like normal.

5: After the system has powered down, re-plug your speakers, microphone, etc. back into the Soundblaster Live.

6: Restart. Your sound should work normally.

What we just did was to tell the Linux kernel to never load the driver that lets it talk to the onboard sound, forcing it to use the Soundblaster Live for everything.

Revision history for this message
Brian Burns (brianburnspl) said : 		#2

That was the solution!
You know how to be clear - thanks a million! I am glad that you were there to help me. :)