Front audio port not working, no headphone slider in alsamix

[yingwuzhao]

I just installed the new Parsix amd 64,

Everything works perfectly, the sound card is recognized and speaker sounds perfect, but strange thing is that: the audio front port doesn't work, it's not recognized. (It works perfect under Windows XP, so it's not a hardware problem.)

Also, under alsamixer (or gnome-volume-manager), there is NO Headphone slider no where! I did some Goggling, and saw a solution is to add a line in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base, look at this post:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=616845

but after playing with it for a few hours, nothing works for me. (it seems it works for some others.)

Here is my hardware:
Athlon x2 5200+
2 Gig Mem
GeForce 7600 GS
NVDIA GeForce7025/nForce™630a chipset
Realtek ALC888, 7.1HD Audio

Any ideas? please help, any information will be appreciated.

-Parsix Rocks.

[mandog]

Hi ive just done a distro upgrade on parsix ie apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade. to bring it in line with R2 I run 64bit as well. And every thing was fine and the Headphone slider is in the mixer window, Have you clicked on edit in the mixer then preferences you should then get a panel appear with the volume control preferences on mine the top entry is headphones make sure its ticked. Mepis/Sidux Are very good sources for Debian info although they are mainly KDE Alsa is basically the same

[yingwuzhao]

Hi, finally I get it to work, the method of adding a line works.
It didn't work the 1st time because I messed up the driver first.
After a fresh installation, and adding the line, everything works perfect.

Right now, the only thing the Parsix doesn't work for me the USB, besides that it's perfect.

[mandog]

If thats the case can you put in a bug report as it must be on the install cd as I said I do Distro upgrades for over a year and do not have any problems on mine as you should not need to add anything to the registry, + that link was over 1 year old and should not be applicable now.

[yingwuzhao]

I surely edit the preference in the volume, and in fact, I looked at the alsamixer to check all the available sliders.

And after I add the line, the Headphone "Switch" come out, but still no slider. That means, plugging the headphone will have sound now, but will not mute the speaker. It will play sound together with the speaker.

So, can't really say it's completely solved. But it's ok for me. I will put a bug report about this later.

Another question I have is that, my sound card is a high definition one, in Window's Xp, it can output high sampling rate up to 192Ghz, (this can be set up by the driver software), I am wondering is there anyway we can set the sound playback sampling rate in Linux?

If you are a serious music listener, you will discover the obvious difference of sound quality between the low and high sampling rate of the same song. Thus, my headphone gives better sound quality when playing the same sound in Windows than in Linux, since I can set the sampling rate to highest in Windows and couldn't figure out any way to do this in Linux.

I feel, Linux has not fully take advantage of my hardware...

[mandog]

Take a look at this http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/Category:Howto how high you can go I do not know? But unless your music is recorded in 24/192 DVD Audio its a bit pointless really.

[yingwuzhao]

While you play a song in whatever recorded rate under windows, you open the Realtek driver software, you can change the playback sampling rate from 44, 48, 96, to 192, if using a good pair of headphone, you can easily distinguish the big sound quality difference while changing the sample rate.

So the song is the same but different playback sampling rate give very different sound quality.
You need to use a decent headphone to hear that, say at least a Grado SR60. Maybe that's why most people don't even notice it.

[mandog]

I respect your ideas on the sampling rate as you are removing the brick-wall filtering, but I listen to a lot of 24/96 & 24/192 recordings and just don't see the point of messing with low sound quality, Much better through my valve amps and high end speaker system thats all.

[yingwuzhao]

Hi, of course I could be wrong, I am definitely no expert.
Forget my silliness.

by the way, today I just tried the DreamLinux 3.4, it's equally fast and efficient as Parsix, but several feature that doesn't work for me in Parsix works perfectly out of box in DreamLinux, one of which is the front port audio jack.

[mandog]

Alan spends a little more time than others with the little things this is the only Distro that my obscure multimedia keyboard works from the box. it mounts both sata & ide drives from the box. finds all 8 usb ports, both front and rear multi media jacks and most things just work and every release is a little bit better great stuff.