[SOLVED]ArchLinux no sound

[Babberoni]

Hello everyone, I installed TDM after a long time and I quickly noticed there was no sound.
I checked the console and saw that OpenAL managed to list a bunch of devices but failed to open "ALSA default"

I'm unsure why this error is happening, I never had any issues when i played TDM on Manjaro and Ubuntu a year ago, perhaps its permissions issues?

I'm runnig ArchLinux 5.16.11-arch1-1 (with wayland), I had this issue with an older kernel too though

[nbohr1more]

Try disabling EFX and HRTF

Also, post your darkmod.cfg along with the results of:

CTRL+ALT+ ~ ( tilde ) to open console

condump no_sound.txt

( the resultant file will be in your darkmod directory )

[Babberoni]

50 minutes ago, nbohr1more said:

Try disabling EFX and HRTF

Also, post your darkmod.cfg along with the results of:

CTRL+ALT+ ~ ( tilde ) to open console

condump no_sound.txt

( the resultant file will be in your darkmod directory )

I tried disabling EFX, then HRTF, then both, but it didn't help
I assume you want me to attach the files since pasting here would result in a really long message.

Btw, i manged to find the command s_device by playing around with the console's autocompletion and tried to set the device to each device OpenAL found, when I set any device other than the default one the console does say it successfully started it, however I still can't hear anything (I did restart the game everytime I set the device to be sure)

no_sound.txt Darkmod.cfg

[nbohr1more]

I am not seeing anything informative there.

Did you try the options here:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=FAQ#Sound_Issues

[stgatilov]

The best idea would be to enable debugging information of OpenAL:

#/bin/bash
export ALSOFT_LOGLEVEL=3
export ALSOFT_LOGFILE=openal_log.txt
./thedarkmod.x64

Then you look at openal_log.txt.

You'll probably see some order of reasoning by OpenAL, what it looks at, what it checks, and probably also what fails and why.

[Babberoni]

On 3/1/2022 at 3:20 AM, nbohr1more said:

I am not seeing anything informative there.

Did you try the options here:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=FAQ#Sound_Issues

There are only 2 Sound issues listed here and neither seem to be what I need (the first refers to EAX which has now been changed to EFX and the second problem happens if PulseAudio is in use, I however have replaced it with Pipewire)

 

 

19 hours ago, stgatilov said:

The best idea would be to enable debugging information of OpenAL:

#/bin/bash
export ALSOFT_LOGLEVEL=3
export ALSOFT_LOGFILE=openal_log.txt
./thedarkmod.x64

Then you look at openal_log.txt.

You'll probably see some order of reasoning by OpenAL, what it looks at, what it checks, and probably also what fails and why.

Ok I did that and found out some strange stuff.
The game tries to load some config files that just don't exist on my system, I checked every path from line 3 to 7 but none of those configs seem to exist.
Also for some reason the logging ends abruptly at the end.

As last resort I tried running the game with wine and sound does work in there, the console even finds devices that actually look familiar to me. I attached the console output, it does find Navi 10 HDMI Audio Digital Stereo and Starship/Matisse HD audio controller (my monitor's and Pc's audio outputs respectively)

openal_log.txt Wine_consoleDump.txt

[stgatilov]

5 hours ago, Babberoni said:

ok I did that and found out some strange stuff.
The game tries to load some config files that just don't exist on my system, I checked every path from line 3 to 7 but none of those configs seem to exist.

OpenAL has several places to search for config, and uses the first one which fits, or the default one.
I think it is normal to have no config anywhere.

Quote

Also for some reason the logging ends abruptly at the end.

That's very strange... No idea why it can happen since TDM does not crash.
On the other hand, I recall Linux implementation does not terminate well, maybe that's the reason some text is missing.

Maybe you can try other OpenAL backends?
Here is a sample of OpenAL-soft config file: https://github.com/kcat/openal-soft/blob/master/alsoftrc.sample
You can find line with "drivers" key, and try setting e.g. "drivers = oss".

 

[Babberoni]

On 3/2/2022 at 6:17 PM, stgatilov said:

Maybe you can try other OpenAL backends?

I tried some, namely oss, pulse and alsa but it didn't help.

I tried looking online and came across the openal-info command and something strange happens when I run it:
If i run it without sudo it gives off a few errors, but lists a lot of information and even finds the correct audio outputs of my system, however if I run it with sudo it displays what TDM already showed me and doesn't find the correct outputs (running it with sudo outputs pretty much the same things TDM does).
I've attached the output of both commands (Note that I manually added the error messages as they would not be redirected to the file).

On a side note, I stumbled upon a reddit post of someone having a similar problem in minecraft and the solution was apparently to change ownership of the game files because it runs as root and it couldn't connect to the pulseaudio daemon which was running as the local user. I doubt that's my case (I never run TDM as sudo), but it left me wondering if there's a similar problem with priviledges and permissions on other things.

openal-info-sudo.txt openal-info.txt

[stgatilov]

Maybe it is not directly about user and permissions, but about finding some kind of OS/user config related to sound devices?
 

[Babberoni]

I feel like a dumbass: installing pipewire-alsa fixed it, now I have sound.
Sorry for wasting your time and thanks for the help!

[nbohr1more]

No problem! Thank you for the details, I have added an entry to the wiki

[RandomChain]

Hi, I'm having the same sound issue with TDM 2.11 on Pop!_OS 22.04 (which is using Pipewire).

TDM says:

----- Initializing OpenAL -----
Setup OpenAL device and context
OpenAL: found device 'ALSA Default' [ACTIVE]
OpenAL: found device 'HDA Creative, CA0132 Analog (CARD=Creative,DEV=0)'
OpenAL: found device 'HDA Creative, CA0132 Digital (CARD=Creative,DEV=1)'
OpenAL: failed to open device 'ALSA Default' (0xa004), using default
OpenAL: no device found, sound disabled

 

and I have pipewire-alsa installed...

❯ dpkg -l | grep pipewire-alsa
ii  pipewire-alsa:amd64                            0.3.65~1676316007~22.04~f87feb5                                 amd64        PipeWire ALSA plugin
ii  pipewire-audio-client-libraries                0.3.65~1676316007~22.04~f87feb5                                 all          transitional package for pipewire-alsa and pipewire-jack

 

but when I try to run openal-info I get...

❯ ALSOFT_DRIVERS=alsa openal-info
Available playback devices:
    ALSA Default
    HDA Creative, CA0132 Analog (CARD=Creative,DEV=0)
    HDA Creative, CA0132 Digital (CARD=Creative,DEV=1)
Available capture devices:
    ALSA Default
    HDA Creative, CA0132 Analog (CARD=Creative,DEV=0)
    HDA Creative, CA0132 Digital (CARD=Creative,DEV=1)
    HDA Creative, CA0132 What U Hear (CARD=Creative,DEV=2)
    HDA Creative, CA0132 Alt Analog (CARD=Creative,DEV=4)
Default playback device: ALSA Default
Default capture device: ALSA Default
ALC version: 1.1
AL lib: (EE) ALCplaybackAlsa_open: Could not open playback device 'default': Device or resource busy

!!! Failed to open default device !!!

 

I tried finding openal documentation but got a little lost.

If anyone can direct me to a FAQ or explain how I'm meant to set up my card to work with openal that would be great.

 

[Edit] of course, a second after posting here I figured it out...

I had Firefox running and holding the soundcard, seems that ALSA / openal needs all other audio sources to be closed so it can use the soundcard exclusively. So once everything else except TDM when closed, sound started working again.

Edited February 16, 2023 by RandomChain

[Daft Mugi]

7 hours ago, RandomChain said:

Hi, I'm having the same sound issue with TDM 2.11 on Pop!_OS 22.04 (which is using Pipewire).

I'm also using Pop!_OS 22.04. I haven't had audio issues with TDM. I've kept most things as default, and I can run Firefox and TDM at the same time without audio issues.

If I'm having audio issues, such a QEMU virtual machine messing with audio, I restart audio with the following command:

systemctl --user restart wireplumber pipewire pipewire-pulse

Sometimes after running that command, I have to close and reopen apps to get audio working for them again.

I haven't had to restart my system to get audio working again, but that's also something to try.

For configuration, I copied the default "alsoft.conf" file to "~/.config/alsoft.conf" and edited it to my liking.
The most important line for us taffers being:

stereo-mode = headphones

NOTE: TDM comes with a "alsoft.ini" file, which isn't read on Linux, because the expected filename on Linux is "alsoft.conf".

Glad to hear that you got it working!