sound card software not showing

Hi there.
I am new to this forum and to Linux.

i have got all my apps and programs working on Suse 11.3 but in skype i cant seem to get audio from the usb phone. under option it just says 'pulse audio server (local)' and doesnt show the Intel HDA sound option.

can somebody please help?

On my machine, first choice is "default device", then more specific devices are listed. If it's there, have you tried this?

Oh, and Welcome to SUSEUnbound! Somebody who knows more than I do should be here soon, so if my answer doesn't work, standby a bit. we've got some very experienced and knowledgeable folks here, but it may take a day or so for them to check in.

i dont have any of that on the skype options, it just says pulseaudio server-local and i can not change it??

Is this just a wired usb phone that looks like a receiver or a headset? Not sure if it really matters. Will it work in other programs that allow speech input like just a voice recorder program? (kRecord, kopete, pidgin, something else I can't think of)

I'm using Skype without any difficulty on both 11.2 and 11.3, although with a headset. Everything works including video. Presumably as this is 11.3 you are using the default KDE desktop. I assume you can record and play sounds in other applications but are just having difficulty with Skype. A few things to check.

Click on KMenu > System Settings, under "Hardware" click on Multimedia. In the left pane you should see a speaker icon labeled Phonon. Click on this. In the middle pane under Audio Output and Audio Capture you will see an entry labeled Communication, click on this, in the right pane it should list your sound card as the preferred capture device. What is it? Click on the "Apply Device list" button under the middle pane and make sure the appropriate categories are checked.

Alternatively click on KMenu > Computer > YaST > Hardware > Sound. What sound card and drivers are listed?

Also click on KMix in the system tray then click on the "Mixer" button. A window will open, the window title and tab label should be the name of the sound card being used. In the menu click on Settings > Configure Channels. Make sure you have capture, mike, headphones and pcm available. If in doubt temporarily make all options available.

As I recall Skype uses Alsa as opposed to Pulse Audio, so in a root terminal type "alsamixer" (without quotes) what do you get? If Alsa is your default sound environment it will list your card and show you the options available. You can configure the various channels from here if you like.

It is also quite likely that Pulse Audio is set as your default sound application and you will have to change it to Alsa. To do this click on YaST > System > etc/sysconfig Editor. Select Hardware > Sound Card. Disable Pulse Audio by selecting No. Make sure Alsa is available under LOAD_SEQUENCER and set to Yes. If Alsa is not available (doubtful) you will need to install the packages via YaST.

Otherwise, when you connect your usb device is it recognized? Does it show under device notifier? If it does and Alsa is now your default sound application it should also show in Skype settings as a "generic usb device" or some such. If not in a root terminal type "lsusb" (without quotes) and see if it's listed. If not you'll have to investigate why it is not recognized.

Good luck.

how do i get the Alsa load_sequencer??

i cant seem to remove the pulse audio thing, when i try it says that i will have to remove all sound device, here are a few screen shots of what happened

If you have a default KDE installation in 11.3 pulseaudio should be disabled by default. However if you have installed some Gnome sound app's it may have been enabled. Your YaST etc/sysconfig config should look as below, can you confirm this?



If it is disabled we need to look elsewhere, did you run lsusb?

whats the lsusb??

heres the lsusb:
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 064e:a101 Suyin Corp. Acer CrystalEye Webcam
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Did you run "lsusb" with your usb handset connected? When you connect your hand set does the kde device notifier appear in your system tray?

yes, it does show up on the notifier. but i think until i can totally remove pulseaudio from the system and just leave the Alsa in.
otherwise i think i am stuck.

Okay I'm not at my openSUSE box right now but go into YaST > Software Management and in the search bar type "pulseaudio" (without quotes) to confirm that it is in fact installed. If it shows up in the right hand panel you can just right click on it and select "uninstall" then Accept in order to remove it. Once removed confirm that you still have sound by running one of your sound applications. You may have to reconfigure some sound applications in their settings so that they use Alsa.

just brought a book about opensuse to get a better understanding of Linux, maybe it will mention as well about the sound.

Have you worked through this?

Multimedia and Sound

heres some screen shots of what i have.

skype sound config:



pulseaudio setting 1:



pulseaudio setting 2:

OK, I see the problem. The multimedia "how to" on the main board says,

"OPTIONAL: for better media playback in your browser eg; apple, divx, wmv. Add these, both from Packman
gnome-mplayer
gecko-mediaplayer (several users (RedDwarf) package a newer version of this which may provide added compatibility.)"

The point to stress here is that this is "OPTIONAL." I do not think that Skype performance was considered in compiling the "how to." If you have installed any gnome sound app's then pulseaudio will have automatically been installed as a dependency. As I stated, and have shown, KDE does not use pulseaudio. If you want a pure KDE desktop environment (my advice - take it or leave it - no warranty implied ) you will need to un-install pulse audio, the alsa pulse plugins and the other pulse libs except for,

libpulse-mainloop-glib0
libpulse0
libxine1-pulse

keep these, as you probably have mplayer installed and my find this helpful. So go ahead and remove the pulse packages and openSUSE/KDE should revert to Alsa for sound but as indicated earlier you may have to set alsa in your specific application settings. Then go ahead and configure Skype.

If you simply must have the gnome sound app's then you will have to employ some of the more complicated pulse work arounds. You will find plenty of information about this on the boards of gnome based distro's like ubuntu etc.

will i need to reboot after the un-install??

also got this from terminal
"ALSA lib conf.c:3601:(snd_config_update_r) Cannot access file /etc/alsa-pulse.conf
ALSA lib control.c:902:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL default
cannot open mixer: No such file or directory
"

Yes you should either log out and then log back into KDE or reboot.

thank you very much for all your help guys , with all your advice i finally managed to regain Skype, after a reboot i am back to where i should have been, so the moral of the story was "dont use Pulse audio on suse 11.3" just use Alsa

when i go into sound devices on skype and click the drop down key i get all the options

Okay, excellent! Glad you are back in business with Skype. My experience is that it's best to adopt one desktop environment or the other, either KDE or Gnome. Although the openSUSE KDE desktop includes some gtk app's such as Firefox these come as part of the base install; although Konqueror the native KDE browser is a pretty damn good alternative. It's probably best not to mix and match KDE and Gnome app's unless you have a specific requirement. In which case just be aware that conflicts may arise from time to time that you will have to work through.

i didnt realise i had, i was just trying to get skype working.

i use KDE mainly with firefox and thunderbird

I pulled a rookie mistake on mine new install trying to figure out why I didn't have sound in firefox or nexuiz (a game), and some other spots. But I had perfect sound in amarok and kde. Turns out my PCM level was just turned all the way down.

Rookie mistake? I do stuff like that constantly! At least you figured it out! It takes me longer than the first time I did it, sometimes. Getting old isn't all it's cracked up to be.