Arch Linux

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

issues with sound

I'll try to give as much information as I can, but if I miss to post anything of relevance, please tell me.

First of all, in console I seem to be able to play sounds no problem. I can even play different mp3s simlutaneously. This seems to me to be indicating that I have alsa set up properly.

In KDE, things are a different matter. The sound system fails to start with the following message:

Sound server informational message:
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device: default can't be opened for capture (Invalid argument)
The sound server will continue, using the null output device.

However, I can still play songs through XMMS. But the problem now is, that I can only play one soundfile at a time. Not only that, but (this is the weirdest part) XMMS arbitrarily stops playing every now and then, with no messages of any kind. The only thing I can do is to press the stop button and then play again.

Finally, this is from hwd:

Sound:
       Sound card   : Intel Corp.|ICH4 845G/GL Chipset AC'97 Audio Controller
       ALSA module  : snd-intel8x0

I'd appreciate any help on this issue.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: issues with sound

KDE uses JACK by default. If you want to use ALSA without JACK, then you'll have to set KDE's sound output to ALSA.

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

Re: issues with sound

Thanks, but I'm not using JACK. I've changed KDE's sound-system from autodetect to ALSA.

In either case, back in my gentoo days, I used to turn the KDE sound system off altogether. Apps under KDE would just use ALSA...

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

Re: issues with sound

I have to *bump* this one...
Basically it seems like ogg123 and mpg123 play everything just fine. mp3blaster can't connect to sound-device if anything else is connected to it, and finally, XMMS and Amarok both tend to stop playing at times - they give no error messages, and there's no crash- they just quit playing. No one's got an idea?

xerxes2

Member

From: Malmoe, Sweden

Registered: 2004-04-23

Posts: 1,249

Website

Re: issues with sound

are you running hotplug? I think phrakture had some problems with this soundcard when he was using it,

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arch + gentoo + initng + python = enlisy

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

Re: issues with sound

yes, I am. I could stop using it, I guess, but I'd like to have hal running (which depends on hotplug, if I'm not mistaken). Phrakture, may I ask how you solved the problem?

Thanks for the input, xerxes2.

stenico

Member

Registered: 2005-01-26

Posts: 8

Re: issues with sound

This worked for me:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthrea … ound.state

I had the problem of xmms randomly stopping (probably due to kde wanting to use the sound card...). Previously I had set up dmixer, but didn't fully solve the problem, the solution above seems to be a total fix for me .

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: issues with sound

yes, I am. I could stop using it, I guess, but I'd like to have hal running (which depends on hotplug, if I'm not mistaken). Phrakture, may I ask how you solved the problem?

Thanks for the input, xerxes2.

I'm not exactly sure if this is realted, but for intel-8x0 cards, hotplug loads the intel-8x0m module as well, which is used for modem sounds... these modules clash and cause a whole bunch of headaches.... if the "m" module is loaded, you can "rmmod" it and add it to the hotplug blacklist file

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http://phraktured.net

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

Re: issues with sound

Thanks for the replies. This thread was created quite a while ago, and I've since gone over to Gnome pretty much, which I think handles sound a lot better than KDE. So no problem anymore, at least for me.

Cheers.