I come to this forum begging for help and accept all the "noob" comments anyone wants to throw my way. I posted this in the "Installation" category earlier but I see it has been deleted. I didn't see a category marked "configuration" so I am sorry.

After several days of searching this forum and Google, working my way through the HOWTO on audio, playing with alsamixer, etc., I am still just stumped as to how to get audio to run on this box.

I have a Biostar Motherboard, M7V1G4 with onboard audio and video. KnoppMyth R5A30.2 is installed. Alsamixer (Master and PCM set to 81%) has been run and the Line has been muted and selected as the capture device. The Capture has 95% audio volume. There is a cable running between the lineout on my Happauge WinTV card and the line in (NOT the mic) on my audio inputs.

Audio Device in setup is set to ALSA:default (but always is changed to /dev/dsp3 when I return to the configuration screen).

Trying to watch Live TV or recordings results in a tapping sound from the speakers, no audio, and choppy video.

Running Fuser on /dev/dsp returns nothing.

XAWTV has no audio (even though it reports 90%) but plays video just fine with no delays.

CDs play just fine through Xine and also through MythTV.

I even tried the suggestion in the forums about one person who found that his video card was muted and ran v4lctl. Still no dice (although the tapping noise got to be a higher pitch)

There has to be an easier way! Any help would be appreciated.

If all your problem reports are that good you're not going to get much newbie hassle (although more hardware details might be good). As for the posting in the installation forum, this is definitely post install configuration by Cecil's rules, so you had a learning experience. Just so long as you learn no one holds it against you.

On to your sound problem... Have you discovered the wiki yet? http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/ There are a number of pages over there which seem related to your problem. Don't miss the troubleshooting section and the various HowTos. Also search the forums and the wiki for "spdif pass through" a check box setting which causes a lot of odd issues for folks.

The next step is to gather and post some diagnostic information from various utilities and logs. What does lspci -v show for your audio card? Look for a device or devices descrbed as "Multimedia audio controller". If you find multiple devices you may have some confusion to sort out on that count. Finally a troll through the dmesg, messages, and/or syslog logfiles may turn up some interesting information related to ALSA or your audio device. See the wiki page on "CheckingLogFiles" for more information.

Finally revisit alsamixer (searching for that will get lots of hits, scan those until your head hurts, and then take an hour or so to let it all settle) play with the interface and look up information on any devices you don't recognize. For example I've got one called "IEC958 Playback AC97-SPSA" which needs to be set to 100%.

I also think you're on to something with the device naming funnies. If the settings stuff is reverting to something other than what you set, it's probably not seeing it. I'll have to go look at it to be sure, but I think it wants a real device name there, as in something which exists in the /dev directory.

Good luck!