[CentOS] sound problems... config?

Wed Mar 29 12:37:35 UTC 2017
ken <gebser at mousecar.com>

On 03/29/2017 02:23 AM, Barry Brimer wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Mar 2017, Alice Wonder wrote:
>
>> On 03/28/2017 05:53 PM, ken wrote:
>>> The www has failed me with this, so I'm trying you guys.  Sound worked
>>> great out of the box when I installed 7.2... Yay!  I could watch all
>>> kinds of videos, like on facebook and youtube.  And I could listen to
>>> most podcasts too.  But then something happened. It was either a kernel
>>> upgrade or that I installed vlc (for watching videos on DVD) and the
>>> whole stack of codecs for it... I don't know exactly when, but at some
>>> point I no longer had sound with youtube  and other web videos.  The
>>> videos played fine, just no sound.  Note that using vlc, both video and
>>> the audio with it play just fine.  I need to select the audio driver
>>> (from a list in a vlc menu), however, else the sound won't work in vlc
>>> either.
>>>
>>> If I go into the Applications menu, then System Tools -> Settings ->
>>> Sound, under "Choose a device for sound output:" there are no devices
>>> listed.  There used to be.
>>>
>>> If I run "aplayer file.wav", nothing plays (no sound at all) and I get
>>> the error "main:786: audio open error: No such file or directory".  If,
>>> on the other hand, I run "aplay file.wav -D plughw:0" (i.e., specify
>>> the/a device), I do get sound, the file does play.
>>>
>>> I ran alsa-info.sh and it posted tons of info from it on my setup at
>>> http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=1dba91886be054df4816000768a0f5b109947a48. 
>>>
>>> Yet it still doesn't tell me what's missing.
>>>
>>> Anyone here have an idea...? or thoughts about where to look next?
>>>
>>> tia,
>>> ken
>>
>> I have similar issue with USB headphones. Worked fine in 7.2 but in 
>> 7.3 I frequently have to unplug and plug them back in before it 
>> finally is able to be selected from the menus as my output.
>
> I notice that you have an HDA-Intel. I do as well. By any chance is 
> the last kernel that worked reliably with sound is 
> kernel-3.10.0-229.20.1.el7.x86_64. I find that with kernels newer than 
> kernel-3.10.0-229.20.1.el7.x86_64 the sound card works, but the 
> internal speaker is disabled, but I can plug in headphones and get 
> sound that way. If I boot into kernel-3.10.0-229.20.1.el7.x86_64 with 
> no other modifications to my system, my sound works fine.
>
> Barry 

Hey, Barry,

Thanks for the reply.  Frankly I have no idea at all the last kernel 
version in which audio from non-DVD sources worked properly.  But the 
sound for me, where it has worked, has always worked both from the 
onboard speakers and from the headphones... and I could easily switch 
back and forth, playing from the speakers, then plug in headphones and 
play from them... and back again.  So your situation and mine are 
different... which isn't necessarily to say that a problem can't 
manifest itself in slightly different ways.  I'm just saying that I'm 
not convinced the problem I have is/was caused by a kernel change.  In 
any event, I wouldn't want to go back to an old kernel version.  There 
were some major security patches in the more recent kernels and I 
wouldn't want to introduce those vulnerabilities back into my system.  I 
think I'd rather go without the system's sound.

Thanks++,
ken