Is there *any* sound system for ubuntu that "just works"?

Asked by ZioNemo

Hi,
Thanks for Your efforts.

I am a *very* long time user of Linux (first thing I installed was an MCC Interim Release).

I'm happy and satisfied by it for *almost* everything.

I have horrible experience with the sound system.
I strongly suspect I'm doing something amazingly wrong somewhere because in almost every computer I have (and have had) I have problems with sound.

Currently I gave an Acer Aspire 8930 I managed to make talk, but won't listen to me (audio works, albeit at very low volume, but microphone refuses to).

Similar story with a rather old (2years) desktop with VIA MB.

I tried using a Logithech tlc to get around inability to work with the microphone connected to the audio board. I got the image ok, but no sound.

Alsamixer have tons of sliders, mostly doing nothing (apparently), bit I find no way to understand what I should touch and why.
Having sound work seems to me really rocket science (not really: rockets are relatively simple machines!).

I tried to look on the Internet but I found *very* lengthy instructions involving writing hundred of lines into configuration files (I'm not complaining about writing code instead of point-and-click, but I *know* that if I have to copy a page long list of cryptic lines without understanding them the thing will simply not work. I tried anyway, but I was not surprised by the result).

I think (hope) I really did not understand something very fundamental.
Can someone please point me into the right direction?

I simply cannot believe this is the status of the development of Audio stuff in Linux.
Pretty please tell me just *how* I'm right now making a fool of myself.

Thanks in advance.
ZioNemo

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Ubuntu alsa-driver Edit question
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Revision history for this message
Luke H (luke-h) said :
#1

Which Ubuntu version are you using?

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Tom (tom6) said :
#2
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ZioNemo (zionemo) said :
#3

I'm using an up-to-date intrepid.
I also tried using experimental alsa (which should include support for ALC889).
No joy.
I will look now to the sound troubleshooting, but I think I already went over it several times...

Thanks, anyway.

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Luke H (luke-h) said :
#4

sound is not avaliable in 8.10+ for some reason at the moment.

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Tom (tom6) said :
#5

lol, some of the things are easy to quickly check that you've already done them, without necessarily going the each whole procedure. I often find the problem is something simple like 'wire in the wrong socket or not in at all' - but usually only find that after days of complex solutions and following tons of techie advice from people.

There is another guide after that one but it kinda scares me because it's way beyond my level in linux
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/TroubleShooting

I just hope Mark or Craig or someone pops in to help with this.
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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snospar (john-snospar) said :
#6

Hi,

I think I have the same system (Acer AS8930G) with exactly the same problem. I was running "Intrepid", initially without sound, but when I upgraded Alsa to 1.0.19 I briefly had "some" sound. Turned out, this was only from the front 2 speakers and was poor quality (because you had to pump up the volume to hear it). Other sites suggested hda-verb to change some of the hardware switches but my card doesn't report the relevant /dev entries.

John

http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=1667b77ca7b5c8afa09180d2882c5630a6a53e1c

Revision history for this message
Tom (tom6) said :
#7

@ Snospar, this is already quite an old question. We do need to run through the older questions that are still unsolved but you get more Karma Points for answering newer questions. There is a way of sorting the list of questions into "most recent at top". Hopefully ZioNemo has been able to fix this already and just not got back to us with the answer. On the other hand it's great to see directly relevant specific help offered to people that are possibly really frustrated by this by now. Thanks :)

@ ZioNemo
If you are still having trouble with this please post as a new question because it's very rare to get someone new giving help to such an old question. Re-posting the question catches the attention of a lot of new people at the front-desk and also gives a chance to give a brief summary of what the trouble is right now. Things have hopefully moved on, at least in terms of things that have been ruled out if nothing else.

Good luck and regards to all from
Tom :)

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