Sound on amd64

[Kurt Buff]

First, my apologies - I sent my last missive to Conrad, and not to the
list. I'm replying to myself with an update. Details below.

Kurt

On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 2:51 PM, Kurt Buff <kurt.buff at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 2:24 PM, Conrad J. Sabatier <conrads at cox.net> wrote:
>> On Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:25:58 +0200
>> Tore Lund <tl32 at next.online.no> wrote:
>>
>>> Kurt Buff wrote:
>>> > On Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 8:48 PM, Conrad J. Sabatier <conrads at cox.net>
>>> > wrote:
>>> >> On Sat, 5 Jul 2008 19:02:09 -0700
>>> >> "Kurt Buff" <kurt.buff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >> ...
>>> >> Do you have both the generic sound support (sound) as well as the
>>> >> specific hardware driver enabled in your kernel config?
>>> >
>>> > Sigh. Always something new to learn.
>>>
>>> Just wondering, why do people modify the kernel when kernel loadable
>>> modules can handle the sound card?  Is it necessary on some types of
>>> hardware?
>>
>> Well, probably the main reason most people do it is to strip away any
>> unneeded functionality.  The GENERIC kernel contains a whole slew of
>> drivers and options that most people don't need, but are intended to
>> support a wide range of hardware configurations "out of the box".  You
>> can greatly reduce the kernel's size by only including the features you
>> really need.
>
> I tried a new kernel, but that didn't work, for whatever reason, but
> editing loader.conf did, sort of. I tried adding
>
> sound_load="YES"
> snd_hda_load="YES"
> hint.pcm.0.config="gpio0 gpio1 gpio2 gpio3 gpio4 gpio5 gpio6 gpio7"
>
> but while the cd player now works, I'm not getting output from the
> built-in speakers - it just sounds like it's coming from a long way
> away - I can barely make it out. I suppose that means it's coming from
> the headphone setup, but I'm not sure of that.
>
> I've been googling, but haven't figured this out yet.
>
> Kurt

More careful reading shows that the hint line goes in
/boot/device.hints, but placing it there does not improve the
situation, though the sound does seem to be emitting from the
speakers. It's just that it's very soft, and I can't get it any
louder, though using the slider control in gnome will silence it.

This is a recent Thinkpad T61, and grepping dmesg reveals that the
sound system is detected as an Intel 82801H, and the codec used seems
to be the Analog Devices AD1984.

I'm running 7-STABLE, updated on Saturday.

Thoughts on how to improve this would be much appreciated.
Kurt