On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 11:18:01AM -0500, Curtis Maurand via Dng wrote:
>
>
> On 11/10/25 09:55, ael via Dng wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 08:43:10AM -0500, Curtis Maurand via Dng wrote:
> > > I have a fairly generic install of Excaliber with the mate desktop. I can't
> > > get sound to work at all. I'm working on AMD hardware. (AMD Ryzen 7 6800H).
> > I recently installed excaliber (and then upgraded to testing) on an AMD
> > Ryzen 9 laptop.
> >
> > The problem that I had with sound was that it defaulted to HDMI instead
> > of the built in speakers and microphones: in other words it defaulted to
> > the wrong sound card.
> >
> > I am on the wrong machine just now to compare with your lscpi.
> >
> > But I would always suggest that you work at the alsa level first and get
> > that working: it underlies all the other stuff.
> >
> > Start with trying aplay/arecord and use the -l and -L switches to see
> > what is happening.
> >

> > It would be a good idea to download and run
> >    https://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh
> > and examine the output. It includes all the /proc/asound/cards and much
> > more that I would otherwise be mentioning.

> >
> > Oh yes, and run alsamixer to see what controls and cards you have. Don't
> > forget F5 and F6.
> >
> > You may want to strip out any other sound software like pipewire and
> > pulseaudio (spit) that might be interfering with configuration in the
> > first instance. Once alsa is working, you can build other layers on top
> > if you need them.
> Once I set pipewire, wireplumber, and pipewire-pulse to auto start on login,
> things worked by default. The sound quality is awful. I'm now able to make
> changes to sound cards via the mate sound app (control panel), which I think
> is a front end for alsa-mixer. HDMI audio output is horrible. The analog
> output to either speakers or headphones works great. I haven't set up
> bluetooth on it so I have no idea how that works. I'll have to figure out
> the hdmi issues, but I can live with it this way.  The reason being is that
> this machine is half nas and half media machine. The monitor is a television
> and I watch videos and listen to music on it.
>
> Thanks, all, for your help.

I solved that problem after installation by instead purging
pipewire-alsa.

That package installs ALSA configuration that enforces use of
pipewire. When purging that, which removes that configuration, sound
works perfectly.

Pure ALSA. Less is more.

Ralph.