(X)ubuntu Linux 8.10 does not (out of the box) support the on-board sound card of the Asus P5QL-EM motherboards. Also other types of the P5Q motherboard series are affected.

We are going to use the ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) library to make it work. First of all open the base configuration file of ALSA with an editor. I do it with VIM like this:

sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

All we need to do is to add a line to the very end of the file. So scroll down and enter the last line visible in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The last lines of my alsa-base file

The line you add should be:

options snd-hda-intel model=6stack-dig probe_mask=1

Now save the changes. Most people tell you to reboot after this. However there is a simpler solution. We simply unload the intel sound module of Linux and load it again. Enter the following lines into a terminal window. If the first one gives you an error like "ERROR: Module snd_hda_intel is in use", there is a process running, which is already using your sound card. In that case close all audio players, other configuration tools or GUI panels and try again. If it still would not unload the module, you have to restart. If the error says that the module is not loaded, you can go on.

rmmod snd-hda-intel
modprobe snd-hda-intel

Once you reloaded the sound module, you should run alsamixer to set the volume. You can start alsamixer by saying so in a terminal window for instance. Figure 2 shows my configuration. If you experience poor sound quality with cracking background noises or similar things, you may decrease the volume in alsamixer and increase it on your hardware/soundboxes.

Figure 2: Using alsamixer to set the volume

Now start an audio player and play a song. Do not forget to turn your boxes on. :-) I used XMMS to test the sound. If you do so, make sure that you tell XMMS to use ALSA to play the music. You can find this option in the configuration dialog. You may use my super ultra nice equilizer settings shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: The good old XMMS audio player

If you have the same motherboard as I do, your music should play fine. With a slightly different P5Q motherboard, you might need to use a different model parameter in the alsa-base file. I had to experiment with that option too. You could try model=auto but that did not work for me. My advice is to find out the audio chipset of your motherboard and look into the ALSA documentation to find the correct value for the model parameter. On my computer I can read that documation by typing the following line into a console:

less /usr/share/doc/alsa-base/driver/ALSA-Configuration.txt.gz

It may be somewhere else on your computer, but the file should be called ALSA-Configurationsomething. Search that for your chipset or scroll through the file. The P5QL-EM has the ALC888 chipset. Searching for 888 brings up possible model values that might work if your motherboard is from the P5Q series. Try the one that best describes the audio interface of your motherboard. If none do - which was my case - try them one after another. Good luck!