Bug 197679 - no sound in KDE4 apps
Summary: no sound in KDE4 apps
Status: RESOLVED NOT A BUG
Alias: None
Product: Phonon
Classification: Frameworks and Libraries
Component: Xine backend (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: Debian testing Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Matthias Kretz
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-06-24 01:52 UTC by Andrew Schulman
Modified: 2009-12-11 23:14 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:


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Description Andrew Schulman 2009-06-24 01:52:21 UTC
Version:            (using KDE 4.2.4)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Debian testing/unstable Packages

Sound card is an old Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, using the cs46xx sound driver.  Sound works fine in non-KDE4 apps, e.g. in amarok or kaffeine from KDE3.  But no KDE4 apps give any sound, e.g. Dragon or Amarok 2.

In System settings > Multimedia, I see several devices:

Sound Fusion CS46xx ()
Sound Fusion CS46xx () #1
Pulse Audio
Jack Audio Connection Kit
Esound (ESD)

The last two of these, when I test them with the Test button, give messages that the device doesn't work.  The first two don't give error messages, but they also give no sound.  The third (Pulse Audio) sometimes gives an error dialog, sometimes not, but never any sound.

Any help would be much appreciated.  I'd like to get the sound working.

Thanks,
Andrew.
Comment 1 Martin Sandsmark 2009-06-24 02:05:25 UTC
What backend are you using? (Second tab in the Multimedia KCM.)

Also, do you have PulseAudio installed? If so, try stopping it and removing it (as in uninstalling it, and rebooting), it tends to break things in weird ways.
Comment 2 Andrew Schulman 2009-06-24 03:29:33 UTC
> What backend are you using? (Second tab in the Multimedia
> KCM.)

Forgot to mention, I'm using Xine.  I did try Gstreamer and got some sounds 
out of it, inconsistently, but it interfered with video playback-- some 
other bug report-- so I uninstalled it.  If it were of interest I could try 
reinstalling it for testing.

> Also, do you have PulseAudio installed? If so, try stopping it and
> removing it (as in uninstalling it, and rebooting), it tends to break
> things in weird ways.

No, no PulseAudio or any components of it.

Thanks,
Andrew.
Comment 3 Dario Andres 2009-06-24 16:11:55 UTC
Have you tried reordering the devices in the device list in the first tab of the Multimedia option in SystemSettings? ,  (and testing every of them with the "Play" button) ?
Thanks
Comment 4 Andrew Schulman 2009-06-24 16:53:49 UTC
> Have you tried reordering the devices in the device list in the first tab
> of
> the Multimedia option in SystemSettings? ,  (and testing every of them
with
> the
> "Play" button) ?

I haven't tried to reorder them, but I have tested every one of them, as I
described in the original report.  I also checked the "Show advanced
devices" checkbox and tested all of those-- there were several others,
can't remember the outcomes of all of them, but none of them gave any
sound.

I'm not at home now but will try reordering this evening.
Comment 5 Andrew Schulman 2009-06-26 03:27:09 UTC
I tried reordering the devices but there was no effect.

I just installed phonon-backend-gstreamer, and set GStreamer as the backend.  After I fooled around with the settings a bit, the device list changed to

Sound Fusion CS46xx ()
Sound Fusion CS46xx () #1
default

and now when I test these, all of them work and create sound.  Unfortunately, video playback also fails completely, so that's not a viable option :(

At least now we know this is definitely a problem with the xine backend.

Clarification re PulseAudio:  I don't have the server or any utilities installed, but I do have libpulse0.  I can't remove it without taking most of KDE with it.

Thanks,
Andrew.
Comment 6 Andrew Schulman 2009-06-26 03:43:56 UTC
More data:  I just logged in as 3 other users in turn, and each of them gets sound from the Sound Fusion CS46xx () device with the Xine backend.  My user still doesn't get sound, even after logging out and logging back in.

I smell a permissions problem.  Ideas?
Comment 7 Andrew Schulman 2009-10-25 13:24:38 UTC
This problem has mostly gone away now in KDE 4.3.2.  It does still occur sometimes, but so far I've been able to solve it by logging out and back in again.  So I'll close this as invalid.

Thanks for looking into this.
Andrew.
Comment 8 Andrew Schulman 2009-11-03 08:24:02 UTC
I spoke too soon.  ATM KDE apps give no sound again.  I've logged out and logged back in many times, and while logged out I've removed all of the following:

~/.kde/share/{config,share}/amarok*
~/.kde/share/config/phonondevicesrc
~/.xine
/var/tmp/kde*-andrex
/tmp/ksocket-andrex
/tmp/kde-andrex

But no KDE apps give any sound.  Non-KDE apps, e.g. Xine, do give sound, so this is a KDE-specific problem.

Sometimes after I'm logged in for a while, sound will spontaneously start working again.  Is there a daemon that might have restarted that would account for this?

Thanks,
Andrew.
Comment 9 Helio Chissini de Castro 2009-11-08 14:49:09 UTC
Andrew, seens like your Turtle Beach is providing more than one debice.
It can happens from card to card, i have three on my machine, one Audigy, one internal and an HDMI from video card and sometimes i have a fourth one provided by the USB Webcam, so what can happens is that the output used is not the desired one.
Is very common in my case the hdmi become the default output, and i need to explicit tell to alsa which is my first card.
Can you verify if something like this is happening ?
Comment 10 Oliver Henshaw 2009-11-09 20:03:26 UTC
I also have a cs46xx card, but I don't think I've encountered this problem.

I have had problems with phonon on this and other machines after messing around with backends and device ordering. I've managed to solve these by removing all local phonon config and re-logging in:

.kde/share/config/phonondevicesrc
.config/kde.org/libphonon.conf
.config/kde.org/Phonon-Xine.xine.conf

Note the files under .config/kde.org which you didn't mention in comment #8.


Separately, I have had problems with pulseaudio and timer-based scheduling[1]. Putting tsched=0 in the PA configuration files as a workaround works for PA 0.9.19, but not for 0.9.15. But your problem doesn't sound like a pulseaudio problem, particularly if you can reproduce without pulseaudio installed. Probably busted phonon configuration is more likely if you don't have problems with different logins.

As a last note, I've found the chakra livecd[2] a good way to check phonon bugs I'm interested in aren't influenced by pulseaudio (since not even the libs are installed).

[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=485293
[2] http://chakra-project.org/download-iso.html
Comment 11 Myriam Schweingruber 2009-11-30 13:49:38 UTC
And what about that report now? Is this solved, a workaround, invalid? Please be a bit more precise
Comment 12 Oliver Henshaw 2009-11-30 15:39:58 UTC
A few comments:

(In reply to comment #8)
> I spoke too soon.  ATM KDE apps give no sound again.  I've logged out and
> logged back in many times, and while logged out I've removed all of the
> following:
> 
> ~/.kde/share/{config,share}/amarok*
> ~/.kde/share/config/phonondevicesrc
> ~/.xine
> /var/tmp/kde*-andrex
> /tmp/ksocket-andrex
> /tmp/kde-andrex
You missed out .config/kde.org/libphonon.conf and .config/kde.org/Phonon-Xine.xine.conf. libphonon.conf is probably the most important as it contains the output device preferences. Can you see if removing these files and logging out solves things?


(In reply to comment #9)
> Andrew, seens like your Turtle Beach is providing more than one debice.
> [...] Is very common in my case the hdmi become the default output, and
> i need to explicit tell to alsa which is my first card. Can you verify if
> something like this is happening ?
It sounds like you're talking about ordering of alsa cards. There shouldn't be any problem with one alsa card having several devices (that's what the advanced devices are in phonon, I think).


For the pulseaudio/alsa bug I linked to, setting tsched=0 is a workaround, there is no fix yet afaik. But it's probably not directly related to this bug anyway.
Comment 13 Myriam Schweingruber 2009-12-11 23:14:08 UTC
OK, since we didn't get enough information, I close this for now. Feel free to reopen if you can reproduce this and can give enough details.