Help needed: sound/audio only semi-working

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <20111022125209.9ba97a1f.freebsd at edvax.de>, 
Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:

>On Fri, 21 Oct 2011 18:29:25 -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
>> The really strange thing is that after I followed all the directions here:
>> 
>>    http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/sound-setup.html
>> 
>> This command:
>> 
>>     cat /dev/random > /dev/dsp
>> 
>> *does* produce quite a bit of white noise sound.  However when I perform
>> the other officially recommended basic audio functionality test:
>> 
>>     cdcontrol -f /dev/acd0 play 1
>> 
>> with one of my favorite old audo CDs in the drive (AND with that special
>> little wire running from the back of the drive to my motherboard) all that
>> happens is that the CD/DVD drive apparently _does_ start to read some stuff.
>..
>> as evidenced by the blinking access light in the front of the drive... but I
>> still get no sound out, and YouTube videos still aren't giving me any audio
>> even though the video seems to be playing perfectly.
>
>Does the Handbook mention to check your mixer settings?

No, but I _did_ look at that anyway, because something I read while resarching
this problem indicated that I should.  And those (mixer) settings are all OK.

Anyway... NEVERMIND!  I fiddled a few things some more last night... nothing
that really should have made any difference at all... and I re-booted and
today, now, the sound _is_ playing when I watch YouTube videos in Firefox.
I really don't understand why because I really didn't change anything.  I did
install mplayer and cdparanoia, and then I used the latter to suck some .wav
files off of one of my old CDs and then used mplayer to play them (which
worked OK) but I don't see how any of that should have had any effect on
the audio coming out of the flash plugin for Firefox.  Oh well!  It works
now, and mplayer can play .wav and .mp3 files too.  So mostly everything is
working now, and I am happy.

But playing a CD using cdcontrol still is not working.  That's OK.  I can
easily live without that.  I was only using it for testing purposes anyway.
Still, it is a shame it doesn't just work.

>The problem regarding audio CDs seems to be quite "modern".

I assume by that you mean quite "recent". Yes?

>I also cannot play them anymore (but I don't have that
>special wire installed at the moment). Audio is VIA HDA.

I do believe that the little wire is manditory.  So that explains why it
doesn't work for you.  But I have the little grey wire installed, so I don't
know why it doesn't work for me.

>> So how can it be that this works just fine:
>> 
>>    cat /dev/random > /dev/dsp
>> 
>> even while this:
>> 
>>   cdcontrol -f /dev/acd0 play 1
>> 
>> causes the disk to spin up and read, but otherwise produces utter silence?
>
>CD audio subsystem has been "modernized". :-)

I wouldn't know about that.