HdaIntelSoundHowto

Booting

If your boot hangs on loading the module for snd-hda-intel, try disabling the card in your BIOS. It is called "HD Audio Controller", "Azalia Audio" or similar. Then try solving the problem using the instructions below.

Identify the problem

Most cards seem to work as of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS using the stock kernel. However, the following problems might occur on some setups:

•   No   sound at all  

   

•   Low   volume output  

   

•   High   pitched noise  

   

•   Poor   sound quality  

   

•   Sound   disappears when touching volume controls  

   

•   Sound   works at random after each reboot  

   

•   No   mic working  

Update to the latest version of alsa

•   Install   the required tools  

sudo apt-get install build-essential ncurses-dev gettext

•   Install   your kernel headers  

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

•   Download   the latest version of alsa from Alsa   project   (driver, library, and utils) to a directory (eg. ~/downloads). In   the following we assume that the latest version is 1.0.14. Please   change this in accordance with the one you downloaded from the Alsa   project site.  

   

  •     alsa-driver        

       

  •     alsa-lib        

       

  •     alsa-utils        

     
   

•   Setup   installation directories  

sudo mkdir -p /usr/src/alsa

cd /usr/src/alsa

sudo cp ~/downloads/alsa* .

sudo tar xjf alsa-driver-1.0.14.tar.bz2

sudo tar xjf alsa-lib-1.0.14a.tar.bz2

sudo tar xjf alsa-utils-1.0.14.tar.bz2

•   Compile   and install alsa-driver  

cd alsa-driver-1.0.14

sudo ./configure --with-cards=hda-intel

sudo make

sudo make install

•   Compile   and install alsa-lib  

cd ../alsa-lib-1.0.14a

sudo ./configure

sudo make

sudo make install

•   Compile   and install alsa-utils  

cd ../alsa-utils-1.0.14

sudo ./configure

sudo make

sudo make install

Note that you must have the curses library installed to be able to compile alsa-utils. You can install it with this command from a terminal: sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev

•   Reboot    

Manually Specify Module Parameters

If your sound still doesn't work after installing the latest alsa, it is likely that alsa was unable to autodetect your model. To solve this:

•   Edit   the file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base  

gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

•   Add   the following line to the file, replacing '3stack' with your model   (see below for a complete list)  

options snd-hda-intel model=3stack

•   Reboot    

Another possible option is the 'probe_mask' parameter, which has been known to fix sound issues characterized by the occurrence of "azx_get_response timeout" messages reported with 'dmesg'. Try either "probe_mask=1" or "probe_mask=8" by adding a line like:

options snd-hda-intel probe_mask=1

Choosing your model

The full list of models is available in ALSA-Configuration.txt in the subdirectory /alsa-kernel/Documentation/ of the alsa-driver-1.0.14 directory you created. Note that this list is ordered on modules and codec chips. To find your codec use this command from a terminal:

cat /proc/asound/card0/codec\#*

If one of those worked but was not autodetected, you can help the alsa developers by sending them the output of lspci -nv and the model you used on Alsa BTS.

Extra hints to get sound working

Wrong mixer in use: Sometimes the volume control chooses the OSS mixer if the compatibility module is loaded. You may need to right click on the volume control applet in your gnome-panel and go to the preferences and change the device to the one called Alsa Mixer. The same applies to the gnome volume control program.

Mixer doesn't seem to work: The HD Audio standard has many output channels. As a result, the correct volume sliders might not be visible. Enable the volume sliders through Edit->Preferences in gnome volume control.