[TriLUG] Sound Card Weirdness

[Randy Barlow]

Owen Berry wrote:

>Here's a link to the Gentoo ALSA Guide:
>
>http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/alsa-guide.xml
>
>If you haven't been through that, maybe it'll provide some tips to
>double check your installation.
>  
>
Thanks for the link - that's what I had used to install the sound 
software though.

>On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 08:42:23AM -0500, Matt Werner wrote:
>  
>
>>Randy,
>>Are you using the built-in kernel drivers or alsa-driver/alsa-utils from
>>portage?
>>    
>>
I am using the built in kernel drivers to avoid the pains that come with 
reemerging when a kernel recompile is necessary.

I think this is actually a hardware issue, but the strange thing is that 
I haven't been able to reproduce it lately.  This machine is a Sun Ultra 
20.  It has a headphone jack on the front, and an output jack for 
speakers in the back.  Being that I work with others in the same room, I 
thought, "Hey, I'll use the headphone jack."  Using the headphone jack 
is what seems to be problematic.  When I plug the headphones into the 
headphone jack on the front of the machine, it is a very noisy signal 
(and I think is what triggered the mute-unmute phenomenon).  If I plug 
my headphones into the back of the machine (which they won't reach 
unless I sit under my desk :)) the signal sounds clean.  Oh well, guess 
I'll have to invest in an iPod for work ;)

Thanks for the tips though!

-- 
Randy Barlow
Research Assistant
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
rpbarlow at ncsu.edu