Problems with sound cards and Ubuntu

[Yorus]

Hello!

The forum is not usually very active for this type of query, but I have seen that Cobito, a pro linuxer, has one of the sound cards involved according to his signature, so I will try.

I have changed from a mini-ITX board to a micro-ATX one so that I can fit more things in the PC that didn't fit before, among other things, some of the sound cards that I have at home. These are the problems that have given me so far:

• X-Fi Xtreme Music PCI: It has an effect that is always activated that makes the sound more enveloping, but above all the problem is that it puts an electrical sound in the speakers every so often.
• Audigy SE PCI: At first it put in background noise, but by adjusting volumes with alsamixer I have managed to minimize it. The bad thing is that occasionally, especially when starting some task (opening a window, clicking on something) it puts in a click. Other times it does it without apparently doing anything.
• Sound Blaster Live! 5.1: I have not tested it yet, in Windows 98SE it works perfectly ;D.
• Integrated on the board: No problems.

Let's see what could be. I have Ubuntu Gnome 15.10 64 bits and the Logitech 2.0 normal speakers.

Thanks!

[cobito]

Nowadays, practically everything related to sound in Linux is configured in the PulseAudio volume control. The first thing I would do is disable all sound inputs. It is possible that the clicks are due to that.

Regarding surround sound, do you mean that when you play stereo, it is distributed in 5.1? You say you use stereo speakers so I am not sure. Once again, in the Pulseaudio configuration tab, take a look at what speaker system you have set.

[Yorus]

The PulseAudio control, I imagine, is the main volume control, the typical little speaker on the taskbar, right? I checked it with the X-fi, but with the Audigy, which is the one I have plugged in now, I didn't, so I'll check it.

The reason I use alsamixer is because with the X-fi, the right channel didn't work, and after searching the internet, I found out that it was usually because it was muted, and that mixer fixed it, and it worked.

I'm not sure how to explain the surround sound thing, since I've only tested it with music. It's kind of like when QSound came out a gazillion years ago. I've read that it could be Crystallized (or however it's spelled).

Thanks a lot for the help Cobito, I'll check it this afternoon, although I know that in some of them I muted microphone and line inputs.

R Tape loading error, 0:1

[cobito]

Indeed, there is a problem with Alsa on the Xfi as you mentioned (in my case, the center channel is muted).

The Pulse Audio volume control looks like this:

If you can't find the shortcut, you can launch it with "pavucontrol".

Regarding the surround effect, if you activate any EAX effect or anything like that, I think there is no easy way to fix it. In the long term, you can find a solution if you report the bug.

If you have the time and desire, try a live cd from another distro (OpenSUSE, Mageia or any other) to see if the problem with the Xfi sound effects persists. With the signature configuration and Mageia 5, I can't reproduce that problem.

[Yorus]

I tried Pavucontrol and indeed the inputs were not "muted". Anyway, the clicking continued. I tried Windows to make sure it wasn't a card problem and it sounds great (I mean the Audigy, I'll keep testing the X-Fi with more time), so I restarted Ubuntu in case it was a problem with the Clementine audio player. I used Audacious and not a single click, I restarted Clementine and there were no clicks either. I always used the same music files to make sure, specifically several by Enya in which the slightest cut is noticeable.

Anyway, maybe the "muting" didn't have a full effect until the restart. I hope it continues like this. Too bad it doesn't reach the quality of Windows + AIMP, but I'll keep testing possibilities.

Thanks again, buddy ;).

Edit: Well, some clicks are still coming in.

Edit2: I couldn't resist and tried the X-Fi again, and it behaves the same as the Audigy, with the clicks and doesn't do weird things with the sound (spatial effect and such). I think, although I'll keep testing, it's a Gnome effects thing. I'll turn them off for a while to see how it behaves.

[Yorus]

For other stories I have returned to Linux Mint Cinnamon and I have no problems with the sound, nor with the effects activated. The version of Ubuntu was 15.10 with Gnome, while Mint is based on LTS, so there are some things that are not well tuned in the latest Ubuntu.

[cobito]

It seemed to be a distro thing. The X-Fi has had Linux support for years based on the source code of the driver that Creative released. The operation is quite polished, there are hardly any issues left to solve and what remains are minor bugs.