Enabling NVIDIA Driver kills all audio and resets custom settings

gs82139

As the title implies I cannot get audio from my onboard audio ports or headphone jacks after enabling the NVIDIA drivers in recalbox-boot.conf. My GTX 650 Ti doesn't have HDMI out so I'm stuck with the stereo jacks for audio. Things I've done to try and fix it...

1) Changing Alsa SoundMixer Settings

2) using alsactl store command to save Alsa settings

2.5) Going into asound.state to try and enable things manually

3) Used every output device option listed including auto

4) reinstalling Batocera (which restored sound while using default driver, enabling NVIDIA driver caused issues to reemerge)

Every time I restart or shut down every setting I change goes back to normal. Recalbox.conf lists
audio.device=auto
audio.volume=55
audio.bgmusic=1.
I've tried changing each of these and it doesn't reflect the EmulationStation sound settings on startup. Ex: audio.volume could be set to 100 in recalbox.conf and say 0 in sound settings on startup (and it always says 0 on startup). Any help will be greatly appreciated!

poke

gs82139 Please check the supported hw section in the nvidia website before enabling any driver. Your card is not supported by nvidia-driver in standard batocera.

Take a look in the following thread: https://batocera-linux.xorhub.com/forum/d/1851-batocera-linux-5-21-with-nvidia-legacy-drivers-390-xx

gs82139

Thank you for replying. In the link you shared it says "if you have a GTX Series 5 or newer, you can use the standard batocera image! Just edit recalbox-boot.conf to enable the nvidia drivers." I have a GTX 650 Ti and when I followed the links to the NVIDIA Website it said that both the GTX 650 Ti and 650 Ti BOOST are supported under the Supported Devices tab. Although, the actual driver version number did not match the one my Batocera PC reads it having (Website said 415.27 or something close, my pc has 418.13 or something similar, whichever is enabled once uncommenting the NVIDIA driver line in recalbox-boot.conf; Batocera version 5.21). Is this what you meant by my card not being supported? Because the website does list the 600 series (including 650 Ti) cards as being compatible.

poke

gs82139 Sorry, i might have typed the wrong mode when searching nvidia website.
It is hard to track those problems. How many HDMI outputs your card have? I have to set the audio device to HDMI1 to have sound with my 1060.

gs82139

My 650 Ti has two DVI-Dual Link ports (or just one and a regular DVI it's kinda hard to tell, I use the Dual Link one.) And a Mini HDMI port as it's one source of audio. I don't have a Mini HDMI to HDMI cable to test out whether that works, however I've been reading most people have sound issues with HDMI anyways so I'm going to assume that's the case. I use my mobo's onboard audio out ports on the back and switching from Auto to Analog ALC388 which is the Realtek driver for that port I guess doesn't do anything. I can't get any audio out of either the rear audio IO or the front headphone jack. I have this gut feeling it's tied to how EmulationStation keeps resetting System Volume to 0 on startup every time I restart or shut down. And like I said in my original post, I've changed some Alsa settings and they reset too. Most people say to change recalbox.conf but my EmulationStation Sound Settings seem to completely ignore that as audio.volume could be set to 100, I can reboot, and the ES System Volume will be 0 again with recalbox.conf still showing audio.volume=100. I bought a cheap usb sound card this morning that will get here sometime this week. I'm guessing it won't solve my audio issues but I figured it would be worth a shot. All my USB devices work so I'm crossing my fingers that having a USB to stereo out will somehow redirect all audio from either the GPU or wherever it's focused from at the moment and I can get sound to my speakers again. But it probably won't solve the sound settings reset to 0 bug I'm dealing with.

poke

gs82139 I only use HDMI audio. I had the problems you listed but they go away as soon as I set the right device.

gs82139

Alright, thanks for your help! I'll see if the USB solution works, if not I'll wait for the latest release of Batocera to see if it corrects some issues. I thought I read from the Beta that they're changing some things with that. Have a great day!

poke

gs82139 do you have a working linux installation? you can copy a working asoundrc from that machine to /userdata/system/.asoundrc and see if it works.

changes in 5.22 are mostly in ES. the audio backend remains intact.

audio settings are read/set by the recalbox-conf.sh script. you can try to play with it.

gs82139

I do not have a linux install on any other machine, I have a Windows 10 gaming tower as my primary computer. I have an older Macbook Pro as my laptop, and this Batocera machine was just a pet project since I've wanted something just for emulation and saw some YouTube videos on Batocera so I decided that was going to be my Linux OS even though it's not really a full desktop OS. I will play with the .sh file next while I wait for the USB adapter to get here.

joinski

gs82139

Another thing you could try is this:
Start Kodi and go to System Settings, Audio, Audio Output Device.
Test any Output Device listed there within Kodi (just start FilmOn or Youtube Addon and see, if you have working sound there).

gs82139

I will try the Kodi method as well. Thank you!

gs82139

gs82139 I just tried using Kodi and couldn't get any audio from any source there too. So what does this all mean? The NVIDIA Driver just disables the onboard audio? I have an HP a4313w with a M2N68-LA (Narra5) mobo with integrated Realtek ALC888S audio. Is there a way I can download a driver for that integrated audio and still keep the display part of the driver for the 650 Ti GPU?

gs82139

gs82139 okay so a new development happened. I decided to try and run Batocera off of a flash drive instead of the HDD I'm using in my pc. When using the flash drive instead of the HDD, WITH the NVIDIA driver enabled, I get sound. Does anyone know why my HDD could be causing the audio issues?

poke

gs82139 nvidia-driver does not mess with onboard audio.
hm.. i run from a usb drive due to my development environment. maybe it is some hardcode we inherited from recalbox and rpi. good catch!
could you use a flash driver for now? i will try to reproduce it in the following weeks.

gs82139

poke I embarrassingly found out that my Master Audio setting in Alsa SoundMixer is muted. I unmuted it and got sound again. Unfortunately half of my problem still remains (on HDD, not flash drive) where it mutes and goes back to 0 on startup. I still haven't been able to figure out that part. If you guys will try and adjust anything for future builds, it will be whatever configuaration file handles startup and shut down audio as only when I install Batocera on a new disk and enable NVIDIA driver does this happen. On Nouveau driver it's fine, on NVIDIA driver it's not. And only on HDD (I don't have an extra SSD to try and replicate it out on).

gs82139

gs82139 I did disable auto mute mode in Alsa, but that also gets set back to enabled on startup.

poke

gs82139 make a test for me please. call sync after increasing the volume. reboot and see what happens.
second guess it is reading the default asound.state.. but i still dont understand why you dont have problems with nouveau.

gs82139

poke I will do that now. Just for reference though I use "sudo sync" in the terminal right?

gs82139

poke I did a "sync" commanf and rebooted. Once back in EmulationStation my System Volume is at 0 and Alsa SoundMixer says Master Volume is 34 but muted as usual

poke

gs82139 Thanks for the test! i will have to look at it. If I have any news, I will post here.

gs82139

poke I hope it helps! I found in Google a lot of people have trouble with this problem with desktop versions of linux running Pulse audio as well as Alsa. Since I couldn't find an answer there, I thought this would be the next logical step. Thank you for your time!

gs82139

poke I managed to fix the issue by using a USB audio adapter. The Master Volume in Alsa SoundMixer isn't muting or resetting now. And the System Volume isn't resetting to 0 either in EmulationStation. However, I noticed I don't get any sound if I hold down F2 during startup. All the sound settings mentioned look the same but no sound actually plays from my speakers. I had a CPU fan tied to the BIOS on my motherboard so I get an error on startup every time I turn on the computer, which forces me to press F2 to boot into Batocera. I can if I do but if I don't let go of the key I get no sound, is F2 a special key for Linux that I didn't know about?