No Sound!

[Daniel~]

They don't say which raid your getting. But as it shows up as a approximately 500 gigs and there are two 500 gigs in the array, I'm assuming it sticky for back and repair. Dell is real big on repair of drives. They have a default setting of 1-3 (Changeable) mis -fires on the boot and it auto repairs. I have it set to off for now as I'm messing about a bit with settings still.

So I get up this morning and test sound as a matter of habit... It works!
It works in 5.1. I shut down and do an immediate clonezilla back up.

Reboot and... NO FREAKING sound!!

So this has to be Mint 21 right?

I figured out how to install mint 20.
You have to UN-raid your raid drives which sets them to SATA. Then all your drives become visible and os loadable.

I have to check something in BIOS, be right back ":O)

 

[Daniel~]

I figured out how to install mint 20.
You have to un-raid your raid drives which sets them to SATA. Then all your drives become visible and you can load an OS to them,I Load up my 480 drive with 20.
(I Didn't test sound as I wanted to know if I could re-raid after loading the 480. I can, but the 480 becomes unusable, can't boot.)

I probably could switch back and fourth between raid and sata, but they warn against doing this and say the drives may become unusable.My unraided 480 can't boot when my on board drives are set to raid.

I'm not married to pulse, can we install ALAS?

The first drive is my raided drive, the 480 is my Mint 20 drive. Then my 500 gig backup and the 250 gig music drive.

I have my backups. I'm going to unraid and try installing mint 21 Both the onboard drive and the 480 drive, see what we see..

While it can frustrate the shit out of me, I rather enjoy playing with my systems.":O)

 

[Daniel~]

With drives unraided I install Mint 21 to my 480gig drive. Everything works, the controls, the settings the tool bar notifications on which song is playing.Just no sound.
For me mint sound has always been flaky, never got 5.1 to play only stereo.

So probably not the raid, most likely at this point I have too say it's Mint 21

Think my next step should be to install 2.0 on my raided drives and see if I can't get some kind of sound.
As always, open to suggestions":O)

 

[ThunderRd]

Do you actually have a 5.1 surround system?

I don't, I just use normal stereo. 5.1 sound is a 5-loudspeaker setup, 3 in the front and two behind. If you don't have such a setup, you shouldn't use the setting. 5.1 isn't a sound enhancement for stereo speakers. [In other words, if you do get sound, it will sound funny without all the speakers it looks for].

If you have two identical drives configured in RAID and the total capacity is the same as ONE of the drives then it's RAID 1, the system writes and reads identical data to both drives for redundancy.

 

[Daniel~]

Dude! everyone has 5.1 in America!! LOL
Yes for around 15 years.

The one time it worked all 5 test speakers sounded off.

I unraided and got a good install of 21 on my 480 drive, but EVERYTHING went to shit when I tried to go back to RAID. Ended up with the awful no space on the drives to install.

I tried every option offered me and I was back to totally screwed where I would have to acquire a drive my idiot BIOS hasn't messed with.

Clonezilla saved my ass once more. Have I thanked you lately for clonzilla? Many Thanks!

So I'm back to being raided in 21. I can use my back up drive and music drive, but I can't install another boot able drive...I can live with that as I have no interest in Winblows and I'm getting to old to play around with other distros. Mint as we've seen keeps me pretty busy.

But Sound is essential for me.
I think I 'll go look for ALaS in mint software manager

 

[Gizmo]

With drives unraided I install Mint 21 to my 480gig drive. Everything works, the controls, the settings the tool bar notifications on which song is playing.Just no sound.
For me mint sound has always been flaky, never got 5.1 to play only stereo.

So probably not the raid, most likely at this point I have too say it's Mint 21

Think my next step should be to install 2.0 on my raided drives and see if I can't get some kind of sound.
As always, open to suggestions":O)

What is the output of:

inxi -A

 

[ThunderRd]

It also might be useful to see

inxi -RD

for drive and RAID info

 

[Daniel~]

What is the output of:

inxi -A

What is the output of:

inxi -A

I've beeen installing alsa from mint's software, easy to dump if you need me to, lots more alsa I don't know what I need?

daniel@daniel-XPS-8950:~$ inxi -A
Audio:
Device-1: Intel driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.15.0-53-generic running: yes
Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.99.1 running: yes
Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.48 running: yes
daniel@daniel-XPS-8950:~$

 

[Daniel~]

It also might be useful to see

inxi -RD

for drive and RAID info

daniel@daniel-XPS-8950:~$ inxi -RD
RAID:
Hardware-1: Intel Volume Management Device NVMe RAID Controller driver: vmd
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 1.59 TiB used: 226.49 GiB (13.9%)
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Western Digital model: PC SN810 NVMe WDC 512GB
size: 476.94 GiB
ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 850 EVO 500GB size: 465.76 GiB
ID-3: /dev/sdb vendor: OCZ model: VERTEX4 size: 238.47 GiB
ID-4: /dev/sdc vendor: Crucial model: CT480BX500SSD1 size: 447.13 GiB
daniel@daniel-XPS-8950:~$

 

[Daniel~]

Mint has a ton of alsa stuff what do I actually need?

 

[Daniel~]

Should I be running more than one sound server?

 

[Daniel~]

In case you wanted to know but were just to shy to ask.":O)

System:
Kernel: 5.15.0-53-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.2.0 Desktop: Cinnamon 5.4.12
tk: GTK 3.24.33 wm: Mutter dm: LightDM Distro: Linux Mint 21 Vanessa base: Ubuntu 22.04 jammy
Machine:
Type: Desktop System: Dell product: XPS 8950 v: N/A serial: <superuser required> Chassis:
type: 3 serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: Dell model: 0R6PCT v: A01 serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Dell v: 1.6.0
date: 08/12/2022
Battery:
Device-1: hidpp_battery_0 model: Logitech MX Keys Wireless Keyboard serial: <filter>
charge: 50% (should be ignored) status: N/A
CPU:
Info: 12-core (8-mt/4-st) model: 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700 bits: 64 type: MST AMCP
arch: Alder Lake rev: 2 cache: L1: 1024 KiB L2: 12 MiB L3: 25 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 2643 high: 4758 min/max: 800/4900:3600 cores: 1: 914 2: 1750 3: 894 4: 1910
5: 945 6: 1747 7: 960 8: 4700 9: 4758 10: 4591 11: 4067 12: 4623 13: 3922 14: 1944 15: 3705
16: 4658 17: 800 18: 2658 19: 1704 20: 1627 bogomips: 84480
Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel AlderLake-S GT1 vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel ports: active: DP-1
empty: HDMI-A-1 bus-ID: 0000:00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:4680
Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.3 driver: X: loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa
gpu: i915 display-ID: :0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 3840x2160 s-dpi: 96
Monitor-1: DP-1 model: Samsung res: 3840x2160 dpi: 52 diag: 1630mm (64.2")
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel Graphics (ADL-S GT1) v: 4.6 Mesa 22.0.5 direct render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: Intel vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 0000:00:1f.3
chip-ID: 8086:7ad0
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.15.0-53-generic running: yes
Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.99.1 running: yes
Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.48 running: yes
Network:
Device-1: Realtek Killer E3000 2.5GbE vendor: Rivet Networks driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 3000
bus-ID: 0000:02:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:3000
IF: enp2s0 state: down mac: <filter>
Device-2: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX210/AX211/AX411 160MHz vendor: Rivet Networks driver: iwlwifi
v: kernel bus-ID: 0000:03:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:2725
IF: wlp3s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
Device-1: Intel AX210 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 1-14:5 chip-ID: 8087:0032
Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: down bt-service: enabled,running rfk-block:
hardware: no software: yes address: <filter>
RAID:
Hardware-1: Intel Volume Management Device NVMe RAID Controller driver: vmd v: 0.6
bus-ID: 0000:00:0e.0 chip-ID: 8086:467f
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 1.59 TiB used: 226.51 GiB (13.9%)
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Western Digital model: PC SN810 NVMe WDC 512GB size: 476.94 GiB
speed: 63.2 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> temp: 21.9 C
ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 850 EVO 500GB size: 465.76 GiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s
serial: <filter>
ID-3: /dev/sdb vendor: OCZ model: VERTEX4 size: 238.47 GiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter>
ID-4: /dev/sdc vendor: Crucial model: CT480BX500SSD1 size: 447.13 GiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s
serial: <filter>
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 467.89 GiB used: 39 GiB (8.3%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
ID-2: /boot/efi size: 511 MiB used: 13.7 MiB (2.7%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1
Swap:
ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 file: /swapfile
USB:
Hub-1: 1-0:1 info: Hi-speed hub with single TT ports: 16 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s
chip-ID: 1d6b:0002
Device-1: 1-4:2 info: Kensington Expert Wireless Trackball Mouse (K72359WW) type: Mouse,HID
driver: hid-generic,usbhid rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s chip-ID: 047d:8018
Device-2: 1-5:3 info: Logitech Unifying Receiver type: Keyboard,Mouse,HID
driver: logitech-djreceiver,usbhid rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s chip-ID: 046d:c52b
Device-3: 1-10:4 info: Initio Samsung Writemaster external DVD writer type: Mass Storage
driver: usb-storage rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s chip-ID: 13fd:2040
Device-4: 1-14:5 info: Intel AX210 Bluetooth type: Bluetooth driver: btusb rev: 2.0
speed: 12 Mb/s chip-ID: 8087:0032
Hub-2: 2-0:1 info: Super-speed hub ports: 9 rev: 3.1 speed: 20 Gb/s chip-ID: 1d6b:0003
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 33.0 C mobo: 19.0 C
Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 814 mobo: 699
Repos:
Packages: apt: 2200
No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list
1: deb https: //mirrors.gigenet.com/linuxmint/repo vanessa main upstream import backport
2: deb http: //ftp.usf.edu/pub/ubuntu jammy main restricted universe multiverse
3: deb http: //ftp.usf.edu/pub/ubuntu jammy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
4: deb http: //ftp.usf.edu/pub/ubuntu jammy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
5: deb http: //security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-security main restricted universe multiverse
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-source-repositories.list
1: deb-src https: //mirrors.gigenet.com/linuxmint/repo vanessa main upstream import backport
2: deb-src http: //ftp.usf.edu/pub/ubuntu jammy main restricted universe multiverse
3: deb-src http: //ftp.usf.edu/pub/ubuntu jammy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
4: deb-src http: //ftp.usf.edu/pub/ubuntu jammy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
5: deb-src http: //security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jammy-security main restricted universe multiverse
Info:
Processes: 394 Uptime: 15m Memory: 15.35 GiB used: 2.07 GiB (13.5%) Init: systemd v: 249
runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 11.3.0 alt: 11 Client: Unknown python3.10 client inxi: 3.3.13

 

[Gizmo]

Have you booted into Windows since trying to get Mint working? Do you have Windows installed on any of your permanent drives?

 

[Daniel~]

Have you booted into Windows since trying to get Mint working? Do you have Windows installed on any of your permanent drives?

No. I messed about with it when it first arrived. I really don't like the way windblows pushes stuff at you, But what got it dumped was of the 6 main Icons that you can't or I couldn't delete was "Windows store"

Where I got myself into trouble is with Dell's restore, I was impatient to get back to you guy and jumped a few guns.

I dd a complete install of Mint 21, embellished with all my favorite things and settings,
Got up next morning and it was all gone. It was replaced by windblows!!
Dell auto repairs or in this case auto replaces.

So I reinstall Mint go into disks and delete the and reformat.
Totally unnecessary! All I really needed to do was turn this feature off in the BIOS.
It will work with other OSs, but haven't tried it yet in mint.
So no windblows any drives

 

[ThunderRd]

Lolz Daniel, I have to be careful what I say to you

I said I myself use ALSA, I didn't mean for you to rush and install ALSA on your computer.

For sure, you shouldn't be running ALSA and Pulseaudio at the same time. Your system worked with Pulse intermittently. I have no experience with troubleshooting Pulse because I don't use it.

That's all I really meant to say

One other thing is sure; you ultimately want to get your OS installed on the NVMe drive, and not any of the others, for performance.

To install Linux there you'll have to prepare the drive as ext4. I can see in your screenshots that the NVMe drive is a FAT filesystem, so Linux won't install there natively without special VFAT drivers in the kernel. FAT is a Windows filesystem.

When you install Mint it should do this automatically as part of the setup routine. Make sure that you select the NVMe drive as your OS target when installing. It would be so much easier if you could disconnect the other drives; have you looked at that option more closely?

 

[Gizmo]

Actually, ALSA is installed by default with Mint; Pulse routes audio through ALSA/OSS/Jack/Whatever else as appropriate. It's basically a management and effects interface for the lower-level drivers. Among other things, it allows for mixing multiple channels together for the output.

What I really don't understand here is that everything Daniel is showing indicates that he SHOULD be getting audio.

Oh!

Umm.........stupid question, Daniel, but how have you got your speakers plugged into the board?

 

[Gizmo]

Looking at this further, I realized that your Audio in the control panel is showing as HDMI, but the your audio driver is snd_hda_intel, which AFAIK is NOT for HDMI output.

Daniel, show me the output of this command, please:
pacmd list-sinks

 

[ThunderRd]

Chris, I don't understand what Pulse is, then. I *thought* it was like a Poettering systemd thingy that replaced ALSA. Does a normal user need both in a Debian/Ubuntu-based system? [Because I for sure do not have both in my Gentoo system, only ALSA+JACK. I don't use systemd, however.]

@Daniel: DISREGARD what I said about not wanting ALSA+Pulse, listen to Chris, lolz

@Gizmo interestingly enough, I just read in the tech news the other day that he has left Red Hat and now works for Microsoft

 

[Daniel~]

Before we go on, I just want to say that you guys a just the best!! ":O)
OH TR Don't worry about my installing Alisa, I didn't get anywhere close to getting it up! ":O)

And now by popular demand!


el-XPS-8950:~$ pacmd list-sinks
1 sink(s) available.
* index: 0
name: <alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.hdmi-surround>
driver: <module-alsa-card.c>
flags: HARDWARE DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY DYNAMIC_LATENCY
state: RUNNING
suspend cause: (none)
priority: 9030
volume: front-left: 96980 / 148% / 10.21 dB, front-right: 96980 / 148% / 10.21 dB, rear-left: 96980 / 148% / 10.21 dB, rear-right: 96980 / 148% / 10.21 dB, front-center: 96980 / 148% / 10.21 dB, lfe: 65411 / 100% / -0.05 dB
balance 0.00
base volume: 65536 / 100% / 0.00 dB
volume steps: 65537
muted: no
current latency: 12.74 ms
max request: 1 KiB
max rewind: 1 KiB
monitor source: 0
sample spec: s16le 6ch 44100Hz
channel map: front-left,front-right,rear-left,rear-right,front-center,lfe
Surround 5.1
used by: 1
linked by: 1
configured latency: 2.51 ms; range is 0.50 .. 2000.00 ms
card: 0 <alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1f.3>
module: 7
properties:
alsa.resolution_bits = "16"
device.api = "alsa"
device.class = "sound"
alsa.class = "generic"
alsa.subclass = "generic-mix"
alsa.name = "HDMI 0"
alsa.id = "HDMI 0"
alsa.subdevice = "0"
alsa.subdevice_name = "subdevice #0"
alsa.device = "3"
alsa.card = "0"
alsa.card_name = "HDA Intel PCH"
alsa.long_card_name = "HDA Intel PCH at 0x6003230000 irq 187"
alsa.driver_name = "snd_hda_intel"
device.bus_path = "pci-0000:00:1f.3"
sysfs.path = "/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3/sound/card0"
device.bus = "pci"
device.vendor.id = "8086"
device.vendor.name = "Intel Corporation"
device.product.id = "7ad0"
device.form_factor = "internal"
device.string = "hdmi:0"
device.buffering.buffer_size = "1058400"
device.buffering.fragment_size = "529200"
device.access_mode = "mmap+timer"
device.profile.name = "hdmi-surround"
device.profile.description = "Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI)"
device.description = "Built-in Audio Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI)"
module-udev-detect.discovered = "1"
device.icon_name = "audio-card-pci"
ports:
hdmi-output-0: HDMI / DisplayPort (priority 5900, latency offset 10000 usec, available: yes)
properties:
device.icon_name = "video-display"
device.product.name = "SAMSUNG"
active port: <hdmi-output-0>
daniel@daniel-XPS-8950:~$

 

[Daniel~]

My main hub is my Samsung 65" Monitor. (New, old got busted in our move.)
My Denon 5.1-7.1 recover has a HDMI directly from my Monitor so that sound is available to all my inputs,
Just so you know. Sound works perfectly On my PS4, TV and Roku.
Each out putted from monitor inputs.
The only way that the computer is different is in it's use of display port
Which is HDMI in it's monitor input and Display port out of my computer.
computer has not got a single HDMI port just the Display port of which there is but one
(I have to admit I freaked a bit at first when I couldn't plug in an HDMI!! LOL