Month: November 2012

Sound for Inspiron 17R

alfC got me into researching how to get the SubWoofer working on my laptop.  I didn’t buy my laptop for high quality sound (as long as Skype works for teleconferencing with co-workers, I’m good), so I didn’t even notice that it wasn’t working.  So, here’s my research…

The Problem

On Ask Ubuntu, the question was asked: How to activate subwoofer in Inspiron 17r?

Here’s the issue.  The subwoofer control is disabled:

The sound works fine to me.  The subwoofer is just a bonus feature, at least in my opinion.  Still, it would be cool to get it to work.

About My Soundcard

I found my driver was snd-hda-intel:


skp@chestnut:~$ lsmod | grep -i snd_hda_intel
snd_hda_intel 33491 3
snd_hda_codec 134212 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel
snd_pcm 96580 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd 78734 16 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
snd_page_alloc 18484 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm

Here are the details on my card:


skp@chestnut:~$ lspci | grep -i "audio device"
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)

I read in the documentation that you can find the model like this:


skp@chestnut:~$ cat /proc/asound/card0/codec* | grep Codec
Codec: IDT 92HD91BXX
Codec: Intel PantherPoint HDMI

Alsa-Base.conf Attempt

I found a Debian system that seems similar: Installing Debian On Asus UX32VD.  Just to try, I added this line to the end of the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf file.

options snd-hda-intel model=alc269-dmic

To test, I found from Ubuntu documentation, that I could use this command to restart just this sound:

sudo alsa force-reload

Unfortunately, it didn’t work!

Default.pa Attempt

So, on to trying another solution from here and here.

Next, I added a line to the /etc/pulse/default.pa file:

load-module module-combine channels=6 channel_map=front-left,front-right,rear-left,rear-right,front-center,lfe

After restarting alsa, it seemed to work. I got a new Output device that had the Subwoofer enabled:

I still can’t hear the output in the Test sound window.  But, at least I have the front and back speakers working:

HDA Analyzer Tool

I found an HDA Analyzer Tool in this question.  You can see the instructions here.

Here’s how I downloaded it:

wget -O run.py http://www.alsa-project.org/hda-analyzer.py

It needed root access, so I ran it like this:

sudo python run.py

Possibly Related

Canary Alternative for Ubuntu

A while back, I came across a tech-talk about Batarang.  According to the video, I had to have Canary because the tool depended on features that were not available in the stable release of Chrome.  To spoil the story, Batarang is now available via the Chrome Store and works fine on Chrome.  But, this is my story on searching for Canary for Linux.

What I found was that Canary was not feasible on Linux.  The best alternative was to install the “daily” release of Chromium.  Because I use Chrome as my day-to-day browser, Chromium works great as a development browser.  They can exist side by side without conflicting.

The Chromium-Daily Repository

My first attempt was to use this chromium-daily repository.  I’ll save you some time: it’s out of date.  Skip on down to the next section.  The only reason that I included this is to point out that it would be great if someone could pick it up to make it active again.

Here’s the install instructions to add the repository and install the browser:

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chromium-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

I get these error messages:


W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu/dists/precise/main/source/Sources 404 Not Found

W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu/dists/precise/main/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found

W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu/dists/precise/main/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found

E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

To remove the PPA, I used this:

sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*chromium*

Chromium Continuous Build Website

So, I found this website:  Chromium Continuous Build.  It apparently keeps a daily build out there.  I just had to download it and unzip it on my drive.

I created a directory to put it in (~/bin/chromium).  Then, I wrote this script to download the latest version:


#!/bin/sh

wget http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-continuous/Linux_x64/LAST_CHANGE
LAST_BUILD_ID=`cat LAST_CHANGE`
echo "Last Update ID: $LAST_BUILD_ID"
wget http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-continuous/Linux_x64/$LAST_BUILD_ID/chrome-linux.zip
unzip chrome-linux.zip

Then, I ran the chrome binary.  This is the version it downloaded:

The cool part is that it is separate from my main chrome browser because it is chromium, and my main browser is chrome.

Batarang

To download the Batarang extension, I ran this:

git clone git://github.com/angular/angularjs-batarang

After it was downloaded, I went to Chrome Extensions:

chrome://chrome/extensions/

Then, I checked the Developer Mode:

Selection_582

Next, I clicked Load Unpacked Extension:

I chose the directory:

That installed the extension.  I went to my site with Angular installed.  I used Ctrl+Shift+J to open the console.  And, there it was:

Resources