Sound issues inventory

Hello,

I figured out that sound issues on Raspberry Pi and more generally Linux installations are often a difficult problem to deal with and the reason is that the causes vary much. The goal of this post is to answer your sound issue according to its cause. This post will be regularly updated as I notice new causes.

Using HDMI

• in /boot/config.txt make sure to set
hdmi_drive=2
dtparam=audio=on
• Avoid this fix if you are using jack audio it will have a reverse effect
  

RetroPie

• Make sure pulseaudio is not installed as it conflict with RetroPie setting.
sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio
• Make sure that Audio_Card (should be default) and Audio_Device (should be HDMI if you have an HDMI cable or PCM if you are using a jack) are set correctly in /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_settings.cfg
• You can change these settings also through RetroPie context menu

Alsa, devices and drivers

• If you lost /dev/snd/ this is the worst case as actually I haven't found any other way than reinstalling your OS through PINN. However you can always try removing and reinstalling alsa-utils and libasound2:
sudo apt-get remove alsa-utils pulseaudio libasound2
sudo apt-get install alsa-utils libasound2
speaker-test


Wine

• Failed to initialize DirectX Audio
• This often happens in RPGMaker games
• It's actually a misleading message. When reading this and searching internet you often find that DirectX is missing. This is not true. This message can actually happen:
• If DirectX is missing
• If the version of DirectX is incompatible with your executable (might be actually too new for your executable and not too old)
• If your sound system can't make a pipe (test it with aplay or paplay)
• If you are cross-executing your Wine binary on another user with "su -l xxxx" from LXDE.
• Solutions:
• Make sure aplay/paplay work (eg type speaker-test)
  
• Make sure Wine output sounds on other games
• Make a pristine Wineprefix and don't upgrade DirectX with winetricks.
• Install your game on that pristine Wineprefix and only the exact needed dependencies

More to be added :-)

 

The pi gamer