Ubuntu precise is sometime unsettling at best. Audio won’t work with my old ALiveNF6G-VSTA. It used to be the reverse on Linux: old hardware would work, new hardware not always. Ubuntu Precise changed that altogether: old hardware isn’t working, and new hardware isn’t working either.
Pretty awesome for an LTS release, but ranting mode off * I use it as my primary system and must say that it’s a good distro.
Front Panel is not detected: first of all, with those cheapo Asrock front audio panel isn’t detected at all while it’s on ‘Auto’ in the Bios. So I put it on ‘Enabled’ and must remember to do this every time I clear the CMOS or do some major Bios overhaul. This isn’t Precise’s fault, anyhow.
What’s is more unsettling is that the Audio Chip-set isn’t detected well. This means Precise does not populate the ‘Sound setting’ panel with any devices, and thus, no external mic is detected. Pretty awesome.
Following the excellent Ubuntu sound troublesholting procedure, I found my information in the ‘Other Useful Information to Quote’ section. How awesome and plain:
$ lspci |grep dio
00:05.0 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
$ cat /proc/asound/car*/co* | grep Codec
Codec: Realtek ALC888
So consulting the HD-Audio-Models ALSA documentation
I find that 3stack-6ch 3-jack 6-channel is what I need and I simply need to add ‘options snd-hda-intel model=3stack-6ch‘ to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf, reboot and check the mixer level with ALSA mixer. That’s all, it now works.
* Ranting apart, I don’t think this is an Ubuntu’s fault. Given the enormous number of different hardware configuration Linux distros and Ubuntu in particular have to deal with, often with little or zero support from manufacturers, I think that their autoconfiguration works pretty well. It’s just that every time I hear someone using Linux stuck with a Wireless card not working, or unable to hear sound, I see that person moving back to Windows or buying an Apple, and this ruins my day.
Quest’ opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione – Non commerciale 3.0 Unported