[kwlug-disc] Audio device not detected?

[Doug Moen]

I just read a series of three blog posts detailing about how useless and broken sound is in Linux.
This resonated with me.
On my Linux Mint system, the sound device periodically disappears, but it comes back when I reboot.
I am not well versed in Linux sound, however. I just know it doesn't work, at least in Mint.

On my T14, aplay is working, but aplay -i just hangs without producing output.

On my desktop, Firefox can play audio just fine, in youtube videos, but aplay doesn't work:
ALSA lib pulse.c:242:(pulse_connect) PulseAudio: Unable to connect: Connection terminated
and the Sound control panel also claims that I have no sound devices.
(Rebooting my desktop should fix this, but I won't do that right now.)

At some point I plan to install Fedora on a sacrificial machine and see if audio works reliably there.

Doug.

On Mon, Jun 2, 2025, at 5:07 PM, Khalid Baheyeldin wrote:
> I know this group has some audiophiles who are well versed in Linux's
> sound components.
> 
> I bought one of the new N100 mini PCs to run various stuff on, and the plan 
> is to replace the Raspberry Pi4 with something more powerful, yet close in 
> power consumption to the Pi.
> 
> The N100 PC runs Xubuntu 24.04.2 LTS, and will be a headless system.
> It has a 3.5mm, and I connected speakers to it.
> 
> When I do:
> 
> $ aplay foo.wav
> Playing WAVE 'foo.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Stereo
> 
> It pretends to play the wave file, but no sound comes out from the speakers.
> 
> But aplay says there are no soundcards ...
> 
> $ aplay -l
> aplay: device_list:277: no soundcards found...
> 
> According to alsa-info, the machine is:
> 
> Manufacturer:      Firebat_Computer
> Product Name:      T8_Plus
> Firmware Version:  5.26
> System SKU:        T8P-F
> 
> And
> 
> !!Soundcards recognised by ALSA
> !!-----------------------------
> 
>  0 [PCH]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH
>                HDA Intel PCH at 0x6001110000 irq 136
>  1 [HID]: USB-Audio - USB Audio and HID
>                CSCTEK USB Audio and HID at usb-0000:00:14.0-6, full speed
> 
> 
> !!PCI Soundcards installed in the system
> !!--------------------------------------
> 
> 00:1f.3 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-N PCH High Definition Audio Controller [8086:54c8]
>         DeviceName: Onboard - Sound
> So there is a sound card.
> 
> But why is aplay not seeing it?
> 
> Any help with this is really appreciated ...
> 
> --
> Khalid M. Baheyeldin
> _______________________________________________
> kwlug-disc mailing list
> To unsubscribe, send an email to kwlug-disc-leave at kwlug.org
> with the subject "unsubscribe", or email
> kwlug-disc-owner at kwlug.org to contact a human being.
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.kwlug.org/pipermail/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org/attachments/20250602/3fa7ba26/attachment-0001.htm>