On 12/21/2013 05:11 PM, Dan McGhee wrote: > ...I now have audio and can play files > and CD's. However, the sound is weak and thready. > > This is the point at which Beats Audio comes in. ALSA apparently > assumes a "default" use of laptop speakers, and this "default" is not > true with the Beats Audio system installed. And, as a result, the sound > is "weak and thready." I don't know if any other laptops have it, but > HP laptops do. This situation can be "fixed" by changing the "pin out" > in the "snd_hda_intel" driver. There is an application called > "hda_jack_retask" that can do it. To date, I have not been successful > in getting the changes applied. > > ...I believe that "hda_jack_retask" depends on PulseAudio because when I ran > it and tried to apply the changes I got this message: > >> Failed to create file /root/.pulse/client.conf/<alpha-numeric name> This is quite embarrassing. I had not installed alsa-tools. Originally, I went to the section "Short Descriptions" and saw that I didn't need any of what was listed. "hdajackretask" was not there. (hint, hint). As I was "googling" to try to solve the situation, one of the "hits" was the BLFS book for alsa-tools. So, I built only "hdajackretask" and tried it out. It worked. My sound is not "weak and thready" anymore. I could use more volume, but it's wonderful in headphones.
At first I still got the error message above, but discovered that hdajackretask's trying to write to .pulse/client.conf was "fixed upstream." So I created a symlink from ~/.pulse to ~/.config/pulse. Worked like a charm. Because of my previous failures, I was running the application as root. That's why it tried to write to root's home directory. I got my success as an unprivileged user--me. Yes, hdajackretask is dependent on PulseAudio. > I think xfce4 starts the PulseAudio daemon, but I don't know how to > verify that. So, I think I get that message either because the daemon > is not running or that I don't have PulseAudio configured correctly. > The first question is, then, how do I tell if the PulseAudio daemon is > running? > > The second question comes from configuring PulseAudio. The PulseAudio > configuration page at > > http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/PerfectSetup/ > > Says that for a system like mine in which udev and ConsoleKit give > access to the sound card but override it with the "audio" group, should > make sure no users are in the "audio" group. It says that "fast > switching" won't occur with people in the "audio" group. This is a big > deviation from what the book says during the installation of ALSA. I > don't like deviating from the book without bringing it to the list. I > can do it, but what are the pros and cons? I removed myself from the audio group and still have access to the sound card as an unprivileged user. Although in my work with hdajackretask, I got asked for my password twice. I guess all is working as it should. I apologize for going on and on about this stuff, but from the results, it's important to those whose systems use snd_hda_intel and have Beats Audio. Dan -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
