MEPIS Community Forum

To begin with, I had no sound. When I tried to open KMix, the wobbly cursor indicator went through its default time and quit. At the command line, either user or root, entering "kmix" immediately returned the prompt. It acts like it's already open or has a conflict.
I have the ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO motherboard, and it says my audio is

VIA VT1708S High Definition Audio 8-channel CODEC
Supports Jack-detect, Multi-Streaming, and Front Panel Jack-Retasking technologies.
Optical S/PDIF Out port at back I/O

I have been working through the document: and got to the place where the suggestion was to open alsamixer from the command line. I was amazed to see the whole mixer! After turning up the volume on the "Master Front" and "PCM", I had sound. But KMix still does not open, and "alsamixer" is not on the menu. At this Forum address
It is. He also said: It's not there, and I see no way to add it. He also said: Yes I can! It is also listed in the "System Monitor" apps. So it is running.

Then in: It looked like that may be the case, so in BIOS I disabled HDMI sound. When I rebooted, KDE said I had modules I could remove, but when I clicked details, there were 2 I could pick from. I chose one (not the "Jack" one). KMix still does not open.

Before I changed the BIOS, when I entered >> lspci | grep -i audio , The result was:
Now it is: I'm wondering if I disabled the wrong device, or if I didn't need to disable either.

Also in: When I run this, I get:

CARDINFO:
CARDINFO{id}="SB"
CARDINFO{card}="0"
CARDINFO{driver}="HDA-Intel"
CARDINFO{name}="HDA ATI SB"
CARDINFO{longname}="HDA ATI SB at 0xfe7f4000 irq 16"
CARDINFO{mixername}="VIA VT1708S"
CARDINFO{components}="HDA:11060397,1043836c,00100000"
sysfs:
ATTR{class}="0x040300"
ATTR{driver}="HDA Intel"
ATTR{vendor}="0x1002"
ATTR{device}="0x4383"
ATTR{subsystem_vendor}="0x1043"
ATTR{subsystem_device}="0x836c"

I think I'm going the wrong direction, or am in a blind alley. Do you have any suggestions?
Thank you.
Lauren

Do you see a Volume Icon (looks like a small speaker) in your system tray (usually to left of the clock somewhere)? In my Mepis 11 install, it's just to the right of the Klipper icon (scissors), and just to the left of the Network Icon.

If so, just click on it and select Mixer (you'll see a button labeled Mixer at the bottom of the volume slider)

Once KMix is loaded, that's the way you get to the Mixer settings (opening Kmix from the Multimedia menus usually doesn't pull up the mixer after it's already in the panel).

I'd see what you get enabling all available channels first (and you can go to Settings>Configure Kmix if some sliders are not visible). Then, if you still can't get sound, others that know more about it may be able to help out.

My guess is that you accidentally removed the panel's System Tray widget.

Are some of the other items that are normally in the system tray (apt-notifier, klipper, network manager, device notifier, etc.) visible?

edit: you might also have removed the panel's Task Manager widget

Well - Duuh - I deleted those!! I did have a creeping sense of foreboding a time or two that it might not have been a good idea. My reasoning was that I needed space for the Task Manager more than I needed those widgets, because I could open them anytime. I saved the Networking Interface, Notifications and Jobs, and of course the "Show hidden Icons" is there.

However, I've never had sound until I found alsamixer. You could respond with "Of course, you didn't have the volume up". But I'm sure that, at first, I clicked on the speaker while I was still trying to get stability in the panels, before I created a new default panel, and the sound level was up. I have learned over the years that it's probable that a volume level will be down or muted. It seems strange to me, however, that KMix would depend on an icon in the system tray for it to open.

I just tried to add a new default panel, and it had the same system tray that I have now. Do I have to delete my default panel and start over to get that icon back?

Thanks to both of you for your help.

If the system tray is in the panel, clicking kmix from the menu, Multimedia, should put it in the system tray. If not it may be hidden. Right click on the arrow for options to hide or unhide an icon.

I deleted the system tray, then added a new one, and now everything is back the way it was in the beginning - including the speaker. And yes, clicking on the speaker opens up the volume slider, and clicking on Mixer opens KMix. But KMix will still not open when selected from the menu. I would rather not have the system tray, and select things when I want them. Now, since I "rattled" the panel, it's all messed up again, and the Task Manager doesn't know where the boundaries of the other icons are (Desktop switcher, clock etc.) and overlays everything, from screen edge to screen edge! And "Spacers" do not provide a barrier either! Oh, Hum.

Sounds very strange. Are you sure you don't have two panels on top of each other, the top one invisible? Or something equally odd?
If sorting this out is to much for you, rename your (invisible) .kde folder in home, log out and start from scratch. A new folder with default settings will be created when you log in again. If successful you can delete the renamed version later.
You have to reconfigure all the kde settings but it might be worth it in this case.
Henry

That is just not the way kmix works in KDE. Once in the system tray it is a system tray app and is used from the system tray.

That being the case, I decided to try deleting the existing default panel, then create 2 new default panels - one at the bottom with the system tray in it that I would seldom use, the other at the top that I always use. That works great! Then I discovered that if, after opening KMix, I close it with "x" at the top right of the screen, it stays in the tray, but if I close it with "File > Quit", it leaves the tray, and is now active from the Menu. By the way, the reason for this whole mess in the first place is that I thought the "Mixer" at the bottom of the volume slider was just a title, not an active button that opened the mixer, so I never tried it!

After getting this working, I decided I wanted to try, for the learning experience, your suggestion, Henry:
I guess I shouldn't have tried that when I had everything working. It almost got me in a panic mode! The first step, renaming ~/.kde worked OK, and, yes, the default panel was there in all its unformatted glory. But then when I tried to delete the new ~/.kde and rename the original back to ~/.kde, it was NOT happy! It brought up the warning copy window about writing into files. When I started saying "yes", it got to the place where "Dolphin" was being ripped out. Oops! I feel it was about like trying to take the head off an engine while the car is driving down the road - gets ugly! I tried moving it to a different location and then copying it back--wrong. I tried switching out of x window, and copying it, but I was doing something wrong that I didn't understand. If I had just renamed it from there, it might have worked. In the end, I rebooted from SLED11 and did the copy from there, so now I'm back in business. Hey, I had that "learning experience"!!

Thanks everyone for your help!
Lauren

To do that without problems you must stop kde.
Henry