Arch Linux

Raptorista

Member

From: Italy

Registered: 2011-08-01

Posts: 42

Weird and occasional audio behaviour

Hello everybody
    I've always had this strange problem with Archlinux, and eventually I decidede to ask your opinion about it.
Sometimes I turn on my PC and audio doesn't work... Only in some applications!
Let me make it more clear: on these unlucky starts, I can hear KDE's login sound, as well as skype and kopete notifications, and even the bells when kmail receives a new mail.
Nevertheless, if I try to launch amarok, mplayer, mpc, youtube or anything else audio will simply not work [mplayer plays but reports an error about its being unable to find an audio device, amarok doesn't even start playing, youtube shows the video but no audio and so on].

When this happens, I simply reboot, and tipycally everything gets back normal on the second [or third, or else] time I boot.

Any clue what this could be?

Further informations:
*  I [finally successfully] DID switch to systemd
*  this problem didn't seem to appear after a particular update
*  in phonon my backend is gstreamer
*  whenever I need to set the volume [speakers, microphone, ...] I open a terminal and run alsamixer

Thanks for help

P.s. Sorry if this is a duplicate of some older post, I wasn't sure what to search at all XD

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Weird and occasional audio behaviour

Sounds like a KDE problem - phonon locking the audio card?

Raptorista

Member

From: Italy

Registered: 2011-08-01

Posts: 42

Re: Weird and occasional audio behaviour

It could be... I searched and found someone on KDE forums who had had the same problem, but no solutions...

Pajaro

Member

Registered: 2004-04-21

Posts: 884

Re: Weird and occasional audio behaviour

kde notifications system always keeps the soundcard you set in phonon busy, so if your soundcard does not work well with that, you might have to use dmix with alsa, unless you you have an audio server like jack in your setup, in which case the solution will be another

Raptorista

Member

From: Italy

Registered: 2011-08-01

Posts: 42

Re: Weird and occasional audio behaviour

@Pajaro: I understand your hypotesis, but I'm not sure how to proceed: I have jack installed, but I don't use it actively [i.e. I never call it in a terminal, but maybe this is right, since it's a server], and dmix is neither in pacman nor in aur...