On Tuesday, 28 April 2020 15:21:09 BST Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 6:51 AM Peter Humphrey <pe...@prh.myzen.co.uk>
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> OK, so card 0 is using snd_hda_intel. Card 0 is most likely the default
> location that sound is going. Blacklisting it will help. That said you have
> 2 USB devices so we need to be careful about extra confusion there. For
> simplicity you might just unplug the webcam (if you can - if this is a
> built-in in a laptop then I understand you have limitations.)
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> > Nope. No pulseaudio.
>
> What is the output of pulseaudio at the command line?
Not found.
> Or maybe just no pluseaudio tools, or whatever it's called on Gentoo
> assuming it's a separate package. I'm no longer running Gentoo (I just find
> this list the best place to get real info) A quick google for pavucontrol
> suggests you can emerge media-sound/pavucontrol to get it.
Do I need it? I have sound without it. To install it I'd have to set the
pulseaudio USE flag; then emerge -uaDvN @world would reinstall 19 packages and
install 10 new ones.
> Use KDE systemsettings, search for sound, choose 'Multimedia', Under 'Audio
> Volume' what do you see? What device is set as default? (This part of
> systemsettings is very similar to pavucontrol but it doesn't give you the
> VU meters which are nicely visible to see what apps are generating audio.
KDE system settings have changed since your day, Mark; there's now no
reference to the hardware at all under Multimedia; only CDDB. There's no
useful USE flag on it.
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> > Third, I haven't any alsa packages installed, except for alsamixer which I
> > installed to help with this problem (it didn't). There's no starting or
> > stopping alsa; KDE seems to have what it needs without alsa specifically.
> > That's why I had no asound.conf; it's also why I rebooted instead of doing
> > something less heavy handed. Then again, why do I need an asound.conf?
>
> No. The fact that you can cat "/proc/asound" asound being "Alsa Sound" says
> Alsa is running. Alsa talks to your sound card hardware and provides a
> "single application" interface to the sound cards. Pulseaudio provides a
> mixer so that multiple apps can all send sound to your hardware.
To clarify:
prh@peak ~ $ eix -Ic alsa
[I] media-libs/alsa-lib (1.2.2{tbz2}@22/04/20): Advanced Linux Sound
Architecture Library
prh@peak ~ $ eix -Ic audio
[I] media-libs/audiofile (0.3.6-r3(0/1){tbz2}@11/04/20): An elegant API for
accessing audio files
I can already send sound from several apps at once to the hardware - at least,
I could with the built-in Intel hardware. Time will tell how the USB device
fares. I think KDE must use media-libs/alsa-lib directly. It must be doing a
lot of work under the bonnet.
> I personally don't think you need asound.conf until you prove that you have
> a need to do some sort of non-standard configuration. That _might_ be
> defining a different default card but KDE can do that for you in system
> settings so my recommendation is no asound.conf for now. Use KDE as it's
> intended and (over the long run) I think it's more maintainable. However,
> you are completely free to use your system any way you want.
Thanks for your help.
--
Regards,
Peter.
