HdaIntelSoundHowto

Booting

If your boot hangs on loading the module for snd-hda-intel, try disabling the card in your BIOS. It is called "HD Audio Controller", "Azalia Audio" or similar. Then try solving the problem using the instructions below.

Identify the problem

Most cards seem to work as of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS using the stock kernel. However, the following problems might occur on some setups:

No sound at all
Low volume output
High pitched noise
Poor sound quality
Sound disappears when touching volume controls
Sound works at random after each reboot
No mic working

Update to the latest version of alsa

These instructions do not interfere with the Ubuntu package structure or other kernel modules - in other words, the changes seem drastic however they are simply adding greater functionality to an existing kernel module

Install the required tools

sudo apt-get install build-essential ncurses-dev

Install your kernel headers

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

Download the latest version of alsa from [http://www.alsa-project.org Alsa project] (driver, library, and utils) to a directory (eg. ~/downloads). In the following we assume that the latest version is 1.0.14rc4. Please change this in accordance with the one you downloaded from the Alsa project site.
- [http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa/ftp/driver/ alsa-driver]
- [http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa/ftp/lib/ alsa-lib]
- [http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa/ftp/utils/ alsa-utils]
Setup installation directories

sudo mkdir -p /usr/src/alsa
cd /usr/src/alsa
sudo cp ~/downloads/alsa* .
sudo tar xjf alsa-driver-1.0.14rc4.tar.bz2
sudo tar xjf alsa-lib-1.0.14rc4.tar.bz2
sudo tar xjf alsa-utils-1.0.14rc4.tar.bz2

Compile and install alsa-driver

cd alsa-driver-1.0.14rc4
sudo ./configure --with-cards=hda-intel
sudo make
sudo make install

Compile and install alsa-lib

cd ../alsa-lib-1.0.14rc4
sudo ./configure
sudo make
sudo make install

Compile and install alsa-utils

cd ../alsa-utils-1.0.14rc4
sudo ./configure
sudo make
sudo make install

Reboot

Manually specify which model you are using

If your sound still doesn't work after installing the latest alsa, it is likely that alsa was unable to autodetect your model. To solve this:

Edit the file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

Add the following line to the file, replacing '3stack' with your model (see below)

options snd-hda-intel model=3stack

Reboot

Choosing your model

The full list of models is available in ALSA-Configuration.txt in the subdirectory /alsa-kernel/Documentation/ of the alsa-driver-1.0.14rc4 directory you created. Note that this list is ordered on modules and codec chips. To find your codec use this command from a terminal:

cat /proc/asound/card0/codec\#*

If one of those worked but was not autodetected, you can help the alsa developers by sending them the output of lspci -nv and the model you used on [http://bugtrack.alsa-project.org Alsa BTS].

Extra hints to get sound working

Wrong mixer in use: Sometimes the volume control chooses the OSS mixer if the compatibility module is loaded. You may need to right click on the volume control applet in your gnome-panel and go to the preferences and change the device to the one called Alsa Mixer. The same applies to the gnome volume control program.

Mixer doesn't seem to work: The HD Audio standard has many output channels. As a result, the correct volume sliders might not be visible. Enable the volume sliders through Edit->Preferences in gnome volume control.