PC speaker does not speak

[Timothy Murphy]

Marc Schwartz wrote:

>>>Bring up the Volume Control. Be sure that all appropriate Playback
>>>volume settings are not muted and are set at a reasonable volume.
>>>
>>>Also, go to the Switches tab and be sure that "External Amplifier" is
>>>checked.  I had to do this to get the internal laptop speakers to work,
>>>even though externally connected speakers worked fine.
>> 
>> As a matter of interest, which is On and which is Off?
>> I get a button which is either light yellow or dark red.
>> 
>> The sound configuration tools are really bizarre.
> 
> Timothy, I am a bit confused by the question, though it may reflect a
> GTK theme issue perhaps (presuming that you are using GNOME of course.)

No, I am using KDE (under FC-4).
When I right-click on the speaker icon in my panel,
I am offered the choice of Show Mixer Window.
On choosing this, I obtain a screen with 16 sliding switches,
each with an icon which presumably is meant to indicate its purpose,
although the right-hand four have the same icon.

When I go to the Switches tab, there are 7 columns
with a coloured icon at the top.
The colours are: red, green and yellow.
At the moment, for example,
the External Amplifier colour is yellow.
If I click on it, it goes green.

I have no idea what these colours mean -
that was my original query.

As to my remark that the sound system is bizarre,
I simply don't know the purpose of most of the controls,
and they do not seem to be explained anywhere.

As it happens, sound is not working at all
on my ancient Sony laptop (C1VFK),
which I would guess is due to an internal hardware fault.
But my main reason for supposing this
is that sound does not work under Windows,
where the sound configuration system is reasonably intelligible.


What I would really like is a very simple input
which will produce a noise if the sound is working,
without having to worry that something somewhere is set to "mute".

As for the system-config-soundcard and its variants,
I've always found this completely useless,
even on machines where sound is working.
What exactly is its function?
If the soundcard is working, it tells you the soundcard is working.
If it is not working, it tells you it is not working.

In my opinion, the whole Linux sound system
has got into the hands of fanatics
who are more or less devoid of common sense.



-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland