audio problem

[me-5yx05kfkO/aqeI1yJSURBw at public.gmane.org (Matthew Gillen)]

John Abreau wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 5:44 PM, Laura Conrad <sunny-O0WJhd4tT3hg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
>> I think the thing to think about is why you're getting a system beep
>> but not music.  And the only way I know to think about it is to run a
>> mixer.
> 
> 
> The system beep comes from the PC speaker -- a tiny speaker on
> the motherboard.  Music comes from external speakers plugged
> into a sound card.
> 
> Even if a motherboard has a built-in audio chipset instead of an
> actual sound card, it still has a separate PC speaker for system beeps.

And the corollary, which is what matters when talking about mixers and sound
daemons: the PC speaker is a separate device file (on my box:
/dev/input/by-path/platform-pcspkr-event-spkr), with its own driver (pcspkr)
that's completely independent of the alsa/pulseaudio stack.

(don't ask me why the PC speaker device, which is an output device, is in
/dev/input/)

Matt