Configuring Sound

Configuring Hardware - Configuring Sound

Obviously, you'll want to have a computer capable of producing sound. First, you'll want to be sure you've configured the proper driver for your sound card in the kernel. To check which sound card you have,

$ sudo lspci -v | grep Audio

The output should look something like this, depending on your hardware:

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak High Definition Audio (rev 06)

If you examine all of the output of lspci -v you should see the details of your audio device. If you've configured the [[Configure the Kernel | kernel]] properly, you should see something at the bottom indicating which kernel driver and modules are in use.

Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel

If you don't see this, either you haven't set up your kernel correctly, or you need to load the module for the card. The module for the card above would be snd-hda-intel. I'd probe the module using

$ sudo modprobe hda-snd-intel

After probing the module, you can once again check lspci -v to see if the module and kernel driver are now in use for that hardware. To enable the module at startup, you'll need to add it to the file /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6.

Once you are confident you have the correct in-kernel drivers or modules configured and installed, we can emerge the packages we'll need to enable a working audio infrastructure.

$ sudo emerge -av alsa-lib alsa-tools alsa-headers alsa-utils

Once the emerge has completed, we'll want to set sound to start up at boot time.

$ sudo rc-update add alsasound boot

To start the sound services

$ sudo /etc/init.d/alsasound start

We'll probably need check our mixer and volume levels using alsamixer.

$ alsamixer

Use the arrow keys to navigate between items. When an item is selected, press M to mute or unmute that device. Press F4 to go into the capture (input) area of alsaconfig. Chances are you have a microphone or line in option and you'll want to make sure it is set to "Capture". Select the desired item using the arrow keys and press the spacebar to enable or disable capture for that audio component. When you are satisfied with your settings, press Esc to exit alsamixer.

If you are using Xfce, you can add a volume control component to your taskbar. Right-click the area where you'd like to put the control, and choose "Add New Items". In the menu that ensues, choose "Mixer" from the list and click "Add". If you see a speaker icon with blue waves, things are looking good and chances are your sound system is working perfectly. If you see a red X, something isn't correctly configured.

If you'd like to test that your audio system is indeed working, you can do so by emerging software such as smplayer or audacious. Otherwise you can proceed to the next section, Configuring Wireless.