Audio setup for VIA8237

[Sy41CL]

Hi, I use the new Sparky 6 "Po Tolo" and  I have a problem with my audio.
VLC and SMPlayer has your settings for output device and works well, but
Sparky don't see my VIA 8237 and offers only "dummy output" so with Firefox
no audio is possible because Firefox (and others browsers) don't have a
setting for output device.
How I can set up Sparky 6 to use the VIA 8237?
All suggestions very appreciated 
Thank you very much.
With best regards.

[paxmark1]

command line try alsamixer to see whats up. 

or try pavucontrol for a gui. 

Also "aptitude search nonfree"    I do not know the "apt search f(x) blah"  that would show what is installed and what is not. 

quick search finds 10 - 15 years of VIA 8237   - should come up easily.  If you have "mpv" installed, try that, much less excess baggage to get it up.

And if you have sox installed, well  "play song.mp3"   "play song.wav"  .ogg   .flac    ....   

It might be just as simple as mix up between hdmi and standard jacks -- digital vs analog.

[Sy41CL]

Hi, thank you very much for help!
I am sorry for my delayed reply but I am very busy at work,
and I preferred to have the time to make some test.
I installed pavucontrol, mpv and sox. Now I have
firefox 69.0 installed and I discovered that for audio/video
use mpv. So I added to the file /etc/mpv/ending-profiles.conf,
the line "audio-device = "VIA8237".
(VIA8237 successfully used by my SMPlayer, that is a
mpv frontend. But, also after reboot, nothing changed.
The Audio works very well with all software that offers the
possibility to set up the audio driver.
Firefox don't offers it and so I still have no audio on every
video on the web (Youtube, ecc.).
Again, Thank you very much.
with best regards.

[paxmark1]

I should have wrote   post output of "inxi -A"    or "inxi -F" with more info.  Use the -F flag if your hardware is less than 18 months old.

For the mpv sox section - if you try mpv, it should just work.
The same for sox and the command play.  It should just work.  These actions are to see if there were problems with the huge numbers of dependencies that VLC and Smplayer have.  A quick and clean check via programs with small code bases and few dependencies.   Rules out bugs in VLC.  When you have problems, simplify, simplify.

Having to edit  /etc/mpv/ending-profiles.conf,  seems a bit much.  Unless your audio is very very new, it should just work, this is not the2000's   
When I see people editing profiles and blacklisting, I have to ask, how old was the source of your doing those actions.  Old crap on the internet is not always your friend.

To see if your audio is mixed up between 2 different "cards" or digital versus analog I would recommend using alsamixer.  Maybe view a youtube video on it.  I had a hdmi digital chip and an intel anlog chip on my (dead) AMD-C50 Bobcat netbox that flipped between on full upgrades, alsamixer fixed.  It shows I have 2 chips on this computer a several year old.

For heavy de-bugging the usage of "pactl" the CLI output of pulse audio.  Lots and lots of info.  Do this as a near last resort. 
You could start with  "pactl list sources | less" to see your sources.  The "| less" at the end  is piping of your output to less, it will be several screens worth scrolling past otherwise. 

"pacmd" has a very high learning curve.   Last resort,

[Sy41CL]

Hi,I installed inxi and trayed inxi -A.
This is the output:
Device-1: VUA VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97
Audio drivers: snd-via82xx Sound Server: ALSA
v: k5.3.0-rc7-sparky-amd64.
This seems that the system know perfectly the audio driver,
but, if I click on the icon of the speaker on Plasma5,
the only device available is "dummy output".
VLC and SMPlayer have NO PROBLEM: works very well.
Thank you very much!

[paxmark1]

You coud also post the output of  cat /proc/asound/cards"        example: 

Code Select Expand

/$  cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [HDMI           ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel HDMI
                      HDA Intel HDMI at 0xf7e14000 irq 30
1 [PCH            ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH
                      HDA Intel PCH at 0xf7e10000 irq 31


Next time use the code button   #     for all data output from your computer.       Ctl-Shift-C  to copy output from a terminal of course.
example from my stable KDE

Code Select Expand

inxi -A
Audio:     Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
           Device-2: Intel 8 Series/C220 Series High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.0-5-amd64


to see yours better

Code Select Expand

Device-1: VUA VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97
Audio drivers: snd-via82xx Sound Server: ALSA
v: k5.3.0-rc7-sparky-amd64.

I see VUA.  If you are typing in the data output via inxi your are degrading, giving us less than perfect information.  Ctl-Shift -C to copy from terminal. 

Trust me, if you are going to use KDE in a rolling distribution there will be problems that come up.  Not as much as in years gone by and not as much as in sid, but  a basic knowledge of how to use a terminal will pay off in the long run. 

Myself, for problems I go to less complicated programs with less dependencies.  Learning pavucontrol or even better alsamixer is worth the time.  Youtube is good for this. 

I leave for others to find ways to get sound out of browsers and any  possible bugs or dependency issues with  ALSA  v: k5.3.0-rc7-sparky-amd64.

To review, videos have sound but browsers do not.  I would recommend pavucontrol or alsamixer to see the present settings.  Look at youtube to gain ability to use them.