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Laptop sound working
I finally have sound , nice to hear 
My laptop is a Packard Bell Easynote MX51-B-058 and is shipped with with Realtek ALC660 HD Audio sound chip, lspci gives the following:
gas@gas-laptop:~$ sudo lspci
00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 0 (rev a2)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 1 (rev a2)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 5 (rev a2)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 4 (rev a2)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 3 (rev a2)
00:00.7 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 2 (rev a2)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a2)
00:09.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:0a.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 LPC Bridge (rev a3)
00:0a.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP51 SMBus (rev a3)
00:0b.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0d.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 IDE (rev a1)
00:0e.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev a1)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
00:14.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Ethernet Controller (rev a3)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/fOpteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. Unknown device 001c (rev 01)
even if it says “Audio device:nVidia” you must use the snd-hda-intel module to make it work and actually ubuntu loads it during startup but sound still doens’t come out from speakers or headphones That module supports lots of chipset and sometimes they are not recognized properly and you must tell him what kind of chip you are using.
My “real” sound chip is the ALC660 from realtek and the solution for me was having a look at:
gas@gas-laptop:~$ zless /usr/share/doc/alsa-base/driver/ALSA-Configuration.txt.gz
scroll down until you find
Module snd-hda-intel
--------------------
Module for Intel HD Audio (ICH6, ICH6M, ESB2, ICH7, ICH8),
ATI SB450, SB600, RS600,
VIA VT8251/VT8237A,
SIS966, ULI M5461
and down again until you find
ALC861/660
3stack 3-jack
3stack-dig 3-jack with SPDIF I/O
6stack-dig 6-jack with SPDIF I/O
3stack-660 3-jack (for ALC660)
uniwill-m31 Uniwill M31 laptop
auto auto-config reading BIOS (default)
as you can see the default config for those chips is “auto” and thats bad….for me the right one was 3stack-660.
Last step and we are done:
gas@gas-laptop:~$ sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base
and add as the last line the following:
options snd-hda-intel model=3stack-660
now, just because we mostly all come from windows,reboot.
Have fun hearing
August 17th, 2007 at 18:56
great the sounds working thx in regards
November 24th, 2007 at 14:35
Hi! I have a problem with soundcard config with ALC861-VD chipset. The method gives no results… What should I do with it? Thanks.