Open Sound System

Hi. I'm coming along nicely with OSS4.2.
One thing that's stopped today now that I've had a great time with the SBlive is trying OSS on the laptop which has HDA ALC888 ICH9 audio chip.

I've reinstalled, deleted everything and reinstalled, tried both latest mercurial and regular 4.2 2002 releases.

Seems that with hda-intel my right channel is massively louder and very very distorted. Especially when doing osstest.
I had initially though it was the left speaker that wasn't working at a nominal level and that the distortion on the right was global. Turns out the left channel is a lot softer, likely nornal level and very clear, while the right channel is horrifically loud and completely distorted. hehehe
Thought it might be somehow related to alsa which was on this linux install prior to OSS. I use NO alsa currently. And ther's not been any pulse or other stuff.

Hoping it's me! Would really like to know if there's a problem with hda-intel

This happens with and without any vmixctl or other mods to config files.



Number of audio devices: 13
Number of audio engines: 21
Number of MIDI devices: 0
Number of mixer devices: 2


Device objects
0: osscore0 OSS core services
1: oss_hdaudio0 Intel HD Audio interrupts=49954 (49954)
HD Audio controller Intel HD Audio
Vendor ID 0x8086284b
Subvendor ID 0x10431763
Codec 0: ALC888 (0x10ec0888/0x10431763)
Codec 1: Motorola3055 (0x10573055)
2: oss_usb0 USB audio core services
3: oss_imux0 OSS IMUX driver

MIDI devices (/dev/midi*)

Mixer devices
0: High Definition Audio ALC888 (Mixer 0 of device object 1)
1: IMUX Control panel (Mixer 0 of device object 3)

Audio devices
HD Audio play front /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcm0 (device index 0)
HD Audio play rear /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcm1 (device index 1)
HD Audio play center/LFE /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcm2 (device index 2)
HD Audio play side /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcm3 (device index 3)
HD Audio play pcm4 /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcm4 (device index 4)
HD Audio play spdif-out /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/spdout0 (device index 5)
HD Audio play spdifout /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/spdout1 (device index 6)
HD Audio play modem /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/mdmout0 (device index 7)
HD Audio rec mix /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcmin0 (device index
HD Audio rec mix /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcmin1 (device index 9)
HD Audio rec modem /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/mdmin0 (device index 10)
IMux0 audio record /dev/oss/oss_imux0/pcmin0 (device index 11)
HD Audio play front (vmix) loopback record /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/loop0 (device index 12)

Nodes
/dev/dsp -> /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcm0
/dev/dsp_in -> /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcm0
/dev/dsp_out -> /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcm0
/dev/dsp_ac3 -> /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/spdout0
/dev/dsp_mmap -> /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcm0
/dev/dsp_multich -> /dev/oss/oss_hdaudio0/pcm0

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=974179
This is exactly the same problem I'm having.
Basically only spdout0 sounds normally.

osstest -V. The results are:

Left plays back at reduced volume
Right plays back at clipping level (you can hear artifacts), but you can still hear the music.

I also discovered that if I let the tests (normal and -V) run to the end that, as long as the inout is set to Front I also get audio from spdif-out. This (spdif) is normal on both channels regardless of the test being run.

It's a known problem with ALC1200 (detected as ALC888 by OSS. ALC1200 is ALC888 with different revision, IIRC?). I don't know how to fix it.

That is terrific to know. Great to rule out user error. I did try with my fresh install that hasn't had alsa-lib alsa-utils etc. installed. Same on any system. well, that's something! thank you very much ....again.

Obviously a fix is of interest. I've had the same issue with latest mercurial from last week as well as standard 4.2 release.

Having just switched my sound over to OSS I'm also having this issue and would greatly appreciate any help anyone can give me on how to solve it.

there's been a bunch of patches on the dev mail list though none obviously for us, though one seemed close. I've been wondering if this would get some attention at the developer level and the others who contribute. Perhaps there'll be some info/luck soon-ish. It's great here on the forum with replies so maybe our posts will twig some response over the next while.
best wishes.

Well, I too am having the exact same issue as only spdout0 seems to sound. From what I could learn, this problem is simply inherent with that of ALC1200. Until, they come up with a firmware upgrade or something, I am not sure anything much can be done about it.