Sound problems FC5

[shazamtwix 0]

Hey folks,

 

I recently (thanks to danleff's help) succeeded in installing FC5 on my system. Actually, I am currently writing this posting on my computer running FC5. How exciting.

 

At any rate, I love the OS, although I am rather new at it. One problem that's cropped up, however, is that I can't seem to get the sound properly configured. Whenever I run soundcard detection, the test sound only plays through the LEFT channel. If I touch the volume slider at all, sound ceases to work entirely. So I would appreciate any assistance on this issue.

 

Here's the hardware I'm running: It's an ASUS P5VDC-X mobo with sound integrated into the VIA southbridge controller. According to the audio detection utility, the default PCM device is AD198x. I hope this is enough info to successfully troubleshoot.

 

Thanks for your help in advance.

[Wilhelmus 1]

Try plugging the speakers to different jack.

 

In my FC5 box, I had to plug my speakers to Mic...

 

 

[shazamtwix 0]

Nope... that hasn't made any difference. Mic and Line In jacks yield no sound at all, unfortunately. Thanks, though.

 

Any other thoughts?

[danleff 0]

Looks like you are going to have trouble with this. See this Asus Compatibility Matrix for Linux.

 

Note the "N/A" for sound. I bet the drivers are not yet perfected in Alsa sound. Let me look at this.

 

Also, your problem has been described elsewhere and it looks like a fix is I the making, although I could not find any real answers, except for "patches", which means a bit of work.

[shazamtwix 0]

Thanks as always, danleff. Patches are probably not the best course of action for a linux newbie, I would imagine. Guess I'll just have to wait this one out... Hopefully a fix will come along soon.

 

[danleff 0]

Sorry i could not be more helpful on this. Looking arouind, others are having the same issue. It seems to be a problem common to Asus systems. Perhaps they will have a bios update soon that will fix it.

 

Perhaps someone else has a fix they know about and will post it.

[shazamtwix 0]

Howdy friends.

 

So I went over to ASUS' website today to check for BIOS updates, and what should I find but a package of DRIVERS for the soundcard, specially made for LINUX systems.

 

So that's the good news.

 

The bad news is that I'm a hopeless noob, and I know absolutely nothing about how to install the drivers

 

Included in the package were the following files:

 

alsa-driver-1.0.10rc2.tar.bz2

alsa-lib-1.0.10rc2.tar.bz2

alsa-utils-1.0.10rc2.tar.bz2

and a readme file that doesn't tell me what to do with these files.

 

Anyone up for helping a hopeless fc5 dabbler out?

 

Thanks!

 

-Michael

[danleff 0]

You already have alsa installed in a default Fedora installation. It should be newer version 1.0.11rc2 in Core 5. The issue is how to get it to work properly with this driver.

 

What happens when you go to a terminal window, as root user and enter alsamixer (hit the enter key).

 

When the config. screen comes up, adjust the volumes on the active channels almost all the way up. Then hit the esc. key when you are finished.

 

I also found that with some cards, you also have to adjust the balance, even if it seems slightly off center, to get both speakers to work. Try doing this all from within alsamixer.