Chapter 9. FAQ

These are a few frequently asked questions and possible solutions for them

1. The driver is installed and successfully loaded in the runtime kernel, but it does not produce any sound. What's wrong?
2. Is it possible to use Jmax with ALSA using my SB Live sound card ?
3. I hear clicking noises,sort of crackle, my card is ens 1370.Any fix?
4. How can I store and restore mixer settings?
5. The driver is loaded, but OSS programs say: Can't open /dev/mixer. What is wrong?
6. The driver is loaded, but OSS programs say: Can't open /dev/dsp. What is wrong?
7. Can I specify which DMA channel will be used for a specific direction with Sound Blaster 16/AWE sound cards?
8. Noises in X-win?
9. How do i remove all modules ?

1. The driver is installed and successfully loaded in the runtime kernel, but it does not produce any sound. What's wrong?

You should raise the volume for mixer channels and/or unmute mixer channels. Look for the alsa-utils package at Alsa FTP Server There are native mixers.

2. Is it possible to use Jmax with ALSA using my SB Live sound card ?

Thanks to Takashi Iwai ,The Alsa drivers provide raw midi output to the SB Live!.This is assuming that you have installed your drivers properly

  • Insert the oss modules /sbin/modprobe snd-pcm-oss

  • Load your soundfont with sfxload (Soundfont that came with the SB Live!cdrom,should do fine )

  • Remove /dev/midi00

  • Make a symbolic line from /dev/snd/midiC0D1 to /dev/midi00

  • Install and run jMax

3. I hear clicking noises,sort of crackle, my card is ens 1370.Any fix?

Apparently, BIOS implementations are supposed to use a round-robin style of resource management for allocating control of "the bus" between the CPU and PCI. However, some BIOS writers found that they could improve benchmarks of their BIOSes if they gave the CPU a slight advantage over the PCI... (i.e. letting it win every time both need the bus, which starves the PCI..) In my BIOS, (flashed to the latest version) this can be turned off by disabling "PCI Delay Transaction." This gets rid of all of the sample-rotation-type audio problems that I was experiencing. The other thing I did was turn on the SDRAM optimization to 2 instead of 3 cycles for sync... (I think that's what it's called) and turn off DRAM altogether, since I don't use any on my motherboard. (This minimizes any remaining clicks by throwing them outta sync)

4. How can I store and restore mixer settings?

Use the native alsactl program (strongly proffered) or an another ALSA mixer program.

5. The driver is loaded, but OSS programs say: Can't open /dev/mixer. What is wrong?

The OSS compatible mixer emulation comes as an add-on module which is not loaded by default. If you have got modified /etc/conf.module as suggested in the INSTALL file, it should be loaded with kerneld or kmod. Check it - if this method for some reason doesn't work - you need to insert the 'snd-mixer-oss' module manually.

6. The driver is loaded, but OSS programs say: Can't open /dev/dsp. What is wrong?

The OSS compatible PCM (digital audio) emulation comes as an add-on module which is not loaded by default. If you have got modified /etc/conf.module as suggested in the INSTALL file, it should be loaded with kerneld or kmod. Check it - if this method for some reason doesn't work - you need to insert the 'snd-pcm-oss' module manually.

7. Can I specify which DMA channel will be used for a specific direction with Sound Blaster 16/AWE sound cards?

Yes, you may change the default settings (which is auto) over the /proc interface. Look to the INSTALL file for more details.

8. Noises in X-win?

Try comment out line in your XF86Config file: #Option "pci_retry" # faster, but problematic for ISA/PCI sound cards More information: XFree86

9. How do i remove all modules ?

Removing 10+ modules one by one is not the way to go. Luckily, all modules start with the "snd-" prefix, so a little command line programming will do. You can easily remove ALSA sound by issuing a command like:

cat /proc/modules|gawk '/^snd-/{print $1}|xargs -i rmmod {}

Please note: if some module is dependent on another module you cannot just remove the "higher" one. This means that you might need to issue a second removal statement. I never encountered this situation though, it seems that you can remove the ALSA modules in the order they appear in /proc/modules.

Juergen Kahrs wrote: ``I have a script that also removes soundcore and soundlow and sound if present and if they are not in use. This script processes /proc/modules three times so there should not be too many modules left after processing''. His solution is

awk '/^snd/||/^sound/&&($3==0){system("rmmod " $1)}' /proc/modules /proc/modules /proc/modules