Linux » Flibbles Wibble

HD audio and clicking sound before playback bug

Oct 162009

There seems to be a well known bug with HD audio in Ubuntu which causes a loud click to be heard before playback. I was slightly confused initially when searching for fixes as all posts referred to this as Intel HDA and I’m running an AMD system. It turns out that the VIA VT1708S HD Audio chipset is used by both AMD and Intel motherboards and ALSA has support for this in the snd-hda-intel module.

The problem is that the snd-hda-intel module is set to power down the audio chip after 10 minutes. The causes a clicking noise before playback. The easy fix for this is to edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf and look for this line:

# Power down HDA controllers after 10 idle seconds

below this, change the timeout from 10 to 0 like this:

options snd-hda-intel power_save=0 power_save_controller=N

and save the file. You’ll need to do this as superuser so either use “gksu gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf” or do it the hardcore way with nano!

Reboot!

Getting the Maplin MCE remote working in Ubuntu

Linux 2 Responses »

Oct 162009

Today I finally decided to get this remote working in Ubuntu. The remote has the model number of RC118 and works exactly like the standard MCE remote. The difficulty is with the receiver which is a Formosa device which emulates the MCE Home receiver. Lirc now has support for this receiver so I just had to make a small change:

install lirc and replace /etc/lirc/hardware.conf with the following:

# /etc/lirc/hardware.conf
#
#Chosen Remote Control
REMOTE="Windows Media Center Remotes (new version Philips et al.)"
REMOTE_MODULES="lirc_dev lirc_mceusb"
REMOTE_DRIVER=""
REMOTE_DEVICE="/dev/lirc0"
REMOTE_LIRCD_CONF="mceusb/lircd.conf.mceusb"
REMOTE_LIRCD_ARGS=""

#Chosen IR Transmitter
TRANSMITTER="None"
TRANSMITTER_MODULES=""
TRANSMITTER_DRIVER=""
TRANSMITTER_DEVICE=""
TRANSMITTER_LIRCD_CONF=""
TRANSMITTER_LIRCD_ARGS=""

#Enable lircd
START_LIRCD="true"

#Don't start lircmd even if there seems to be a good config file
#START_LIRCMD="false"

#Try to load appropriate kernel modules
LOAD_MODULES="true"

# Default configuration files for your hardware if any
LIRCMD_CONF=""

#Forcing noninteractive reconfiguration
#If lirc is to be reconfigured by an external application
#that doesn't have a debconf frontend available, the noninteractive
#frontend can be invoked and set to parse REMOTE and TRANSMITTER
#It will then populate all other variables without any user input
#If you would like to configure lirc via standard methods, be sure
#to leave this set to "false"
FORCE_NONINTERACTIVE_RECONFIGURATION="false"
START_LIRCMD=""

then remove the current loaded module for lirc_mceusb and load the new one:

$ sudo rmmod lirc_mceusb
$ sudo modprobe lirc_mceusb

and running irw should show the module working and recognising keypresses. Boxee is great when using a remote!

Update:

The remote works in Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) without needing to edit any configuration files. Just install lirc and when you are asked to configure, select “Windows Media Centre Remote”

Website design tweaks and updates

Linux No Responses »

Jul 112009

I’ve been working on the website template and making some changes to the design and layout. It’s still a work in progress but if you have any comments, I would love to hear them.

Windows 7 7201

Linux No Responses »

Jun 052009

Yesterday I downloaded build 7201 of Windows 7. The leaked build is from winmain_win7ids_sp IDX Client and Server branch, which has been said to be RC2 (Release Candidate 2). In fact, it’s Internal Developer build which may have more bugs than the RC.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/06/03/windows-7-build-7201-leaks