Version: (using KDE KDE 3.2.3) Installed from: Gentoo Packages Compiler: gcc version 3.3.3 OS: Linux A lot of people seem to have problems with the kdemultimedia package breaking the alsa sound after installation. See for example <a href="http://dot.kde.org/1070894366/1071099818/">this thread</a> or <a href="http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/05/thallma_91_sndsilence.html">this SuSE help page</a>. Since I found no bug report addressing this, I thought I should write one. As for myself, I had a Gentoo installation with the sound working fine, until I installed the kdemultimedia package and rebooted. Afterwards the sound was dead, and after hours of googling I found that I had to mute the IEC958 channels. I think the kdemultimedia package should better not touch those settings if they cause so many problems.
Oops - I forgot: my system has a MSI Neo2 LS mobo with an Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 2).
This might be the cause of the following reasons: 1. your soundcard sucks (or why should _unmuting_ a channel make the sound go away?) 2. alsa sucks, by default it mutes all channels, I guess the kmix default for alsa is to unmute all channels so people get sound at all Once you set up proper values in kmix and exit kde they will be saved and reused next time. I don't see a problem in this behaviour.
I've actually had this problem myself. KMix had enabled the Digital Sound setting on my intel8x0, which completely hosed all sound, even after you went and disabled the setting. Raising volume to normal on the channels is one thing, but the boolean enable/disable switches shouldn't be touched IMO unless KMix can confirm that they are just "Mute" switches.
Stefan, this behavior is a problem because: 1) A large variety of sound cards is affected, as you can see from the links in my original posting. 2) the channels in question (for my soundcard, at least) are CAPTURE channels, not output channels. Why should kmix even have to touch them? 3) This behavior causes endless headaches for not-so-experienced users, and gives KDE a bad reputation (think of all the "KDE broke my sound!" postings on various newsgroups.) In my case, I had to press the "advanced" button in kmix and then mute "IEC958 Capture." Sure, easy enough if you know what to do, but the solution didn't immediately come to my mind...
I also had problems with the intel8x0 ALSA driver, as discussed in bug #69320. Briefly, there is a mixer setting called "External amplifier down", which was enabled by default in KMix causing the laptop's built-in speakers to be disabled. I have just upgraded to Linux 2.6.7, and I have noticed that ion the most recent ALSA version, the name of the mixer control has been changed to "External amplifier" and its meaning has been reversed!!! It now has to be turned on to enable the laptop speakers.
alsa/artsd has been improved on more recent version. Moreover the current KDE4 is using phonon which works well with alsa too.