[mythtv-users] Completely remove and reinstall sound

[Stephen Worthington]

On Tue, 8 Nov 2016 10:13:52 +0000, you wrote:

>On 08/11/16 09:33, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>> On Sat, 5 Nov 2016 21:11:22 +0100, you wrote:
>>
>>> Hello!
>>>
>>> I have been struggling for some time to correct some sound issues.
>>>
>>> One problem I have is that sometimes but not always I get no sound
>>> at all. The workaround for that is to restart xfce4-session after
>>> startup and then it always works. Feels like a race condition between
>>> some processes I can't figure out.
>>>
>>> The system is Debian Jessie, but it has been updated all the way
>>>from Etch (2007) or there about.
>>>
>>> Now, with no better ideas, I thought that if I completely remove the
>>> installed sound and all configuration files and reinstall it again I
>>> was hoping that it would set everything up correctly. Maybe it's a
>>> longshot.
>>>
>>> I don't find any alsa configuration files but I found one for pulseaudio
>>> even though the pulseaudio package wasn't installed. However, I had
>>> libpulse0 and libpulse-mainloop-glib0 installed. But uninstalling them
>>> would practically remove mythtv and many other things.
>>>
>>> So, what else except this would I have to do to completely remove:
>>>  mv /etc/pulse/client.conf /etc/pulse/client.conf_old
>>>  apt-get purge alsa-base alsa-oss alsa-utils
>>>
>>> And what packages do I need to install?
>>>
>>> Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Peter Carlsson
>>
>> What are you using for your audio output?  On Mythbuntu 16.04, I am
>> using SPDIF, and am having a persistent problem where something is
>> turning off the SPDIF output in Alsa.  If I run alsamixer and unmute
>> the SPDIF output, it works again.  Until the next time it happens.  I
>> have yet to work out what may be doing this, but it was not happening
>> with my Mythbuntu 14.04 setup.  Does that sound anything like your
>> problem?
>>
>Don't you have to arrange to save your updated ALSA settings and restore them when the next boot 
>occurs? I don't have this problem so I can't advise, but I remember a discussion along these lines a 
>good while back.

The OS does the save and restore of alsa settings automatically.  And
if I manually do an "alsactl store" after I unmute SPDIF, followed by
"alsactl restore", SPDIF stays unmuted.  But when I try "alsactl
restore" after SPDIF has been muted again, it does not unmute - so
whatever is muting SPDIF is also doing an "alsactl store".