[svlug] Audio Problem

[Thomas G. Digby]

I have a problem playing audio files.  

When I try to play a file with play or aplay the sound plays in a short
loop, the same half-second or so playing over and over until I stop the
player with Ctrl-C.  The length of the loop seems longer with one player
than with the other, but the effect is similar.  This happens whether I'm
logged in at a text-mode virtual console or in KDE.

In KDE xmms and Mozilla both work OK for audio, but play and aplay are 
still bad.  

Trying alsaplayer gets the message 

 Failed to load output plugin "alsa". Trying defaults.

with similar looping behavior to play and aplay, except a shorter loop. 


When I do something in KDE that triggers a warning the result is a 
repeating burst of noise until I kill the aplay process.  The same thing 
happens at KDE login, where there's apparently some kind of audio splash 
that plays at login time.  It also happens at KDE logout except that it 
stops by itself after a few seconds.  

I can raise or lower the volume of the repeating garbage with Volume 
Control.  This is with "Enable the Sound System" unchecked in the KDE 
sound configuration dialog.  Shouldn't that mute all audio in KDE?  

Kernel info:  

$ uname -a
Linux ActionCompLinux 2.4.27-2-386 #1 Wed Aug 17 09:33:35 UTC 2005 i686 
GNU/Linux

I have the alsa-modules package installed.  

According to the label on the box the mother board is a Jetway P4MVMP with 
the VIA VT8235/DDR266.  

Here are what seem to be the relevant loaded modules:

$ grep 82 /proc/modules
snd-via82xx            11840   1
snd-ac97-codec         48280   0 [snd-via82xx]
snd-pcm                50216   0 [snd-via82xx snd-pcm-oss snd-ac97-codec]
gameport                1388   0 [snd-via82xx]
snd-mpu401-uart         2800   0 [snd-via82xx]
snd                    28260   1 [snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi 
snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-via82xx snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss 
snd-ac97-codec snd-pcm snd-timer snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi 
snd-seq-device]
snd-page-alloc          4296   0 [snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi snd-seq 
snd-via82xx snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm snd-timer snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device 
snd]
via82cxxx               9256   1 (autoclean)
ide-core               91832   6 (autoclean) [ide-cd ide-detect via82cxxx 
ide-disk]

Doing grep ac97 gets a susbet of the above.  

What else should I be looking for?  


-- 
                       -- Tom Digby
                       bubbles at well.com
                       http://www.well.com/~bubbles/