FreeBSD8.0 sound on Dell Optiplex 960

[Tom Evans]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 5:19 PM, Richard Kuhns <rjk at wintek.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm hoping someone can give me some help getting audio working on this
> beast. I'm by no means an audiophile; I just like to listen to the
> occasional CD and/or online station while I work. None of the jacks on the
> back of the tower seem to do anything.
>
> In addition, when starting a Virtual Machine under VirtualBox, I get a popup
> saying:
>
> "Some audio devices (PCM_in, PCM_mic) could not be opened". Under Details,
> the Error ID is HostAudioNotResponding.
>
> $ cat /dev/sndstat
> FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm: 32bit 2009061500/i386)
> Installed devices:
> pcm0: <HDA ATI R6xx HDMI PCM #0 HDMI> (play) default
> pcm1: <HDA Analog Devices AD1984A PCM #0 Analog> (play/rec)
> pcm2: <HDA Analog Devices AD1984A PCM #1 Analog> (play/rec)
>
> Per the snd_hda manpage, I'm also attaching the hda-related output from a
> verbose boot.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated!
>
> Thanks,
>        - Richart

Your default device is currently the HDMI output on your graphics
card. You probably want to play with sysctl snd.default_unit=1 (or 2)
to set it to one of the analog outputs. One should be the front audio,
the other one should be the back.

Once you've got it sorted out, add to /etc/sysctl.conf to persist it.

Cheers

Tom