Hello, Gentoo. I've finally got around to buying a pair of new loadspeakers for my new (as of 2024-08) PC. The experience has not been relaxed and obvious.
I have connected the speakers up physically. I have made the necessary settings in the kernel configuration, rebuilt and rebooted into it. So far, so good. Then I attempt to use alsamixer to unmute the speakers and, hopefully get some sound out of them. This is where my problems start. alsamixer displays just one object, labelled S/PDIF in the middle of the screen. I don't have an S/PDIF connection, just an ordinary audio cable with a green 3.5 mm jack plug at each end. How do I configure alsamixer to show me appropriate things, such as volume settings and so on. I've tried following https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ALSA, but it is most unhelpful. It describes in detail a few complicated setups, presumably for those who understand the basics and want such a setup. It doesn't say how to get a simple configuration, such as my own, working. I have a /etc/asound.conf file set up, as suggested in the above doc, as: defaults.pcm.!card Generic defaults.pcm.!device 0 defaults.pcm.!ctl Generic .. Before I spend hours reading documentation, could some kind person familiar with these things perhaps give me a tip to getting my speakers working. Setting up loudspeakers shouldn't be this difficult. Thanks in advance for any help! -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
