Bug 310998

Summary: Speaker Placement and Testing buttons don't work
Product: [Applications] systemsettings Reporter: Karthik Periagaram <karthik.periagaram>
Component: kcm_phononAssignee: Harald Sitter <sitter>
Status: RESOLVED NOT A BUG    
Severity: minor    
Priority: NOR    
Version: 4.9.3   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Arch Linux   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Karthik Periagaram 2012-12-01 20:21:27 UTC 
I get no sound when I press any of the speaker testing buttons in the Audio Hardware Setup tab of the Phonon control module.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open System Settings > Multimedia > Phonon.
2. Switch to the Audio Hardware Setup tab.
3. Test any of the speakers in the Speakers Placement and Testing area.
Actual Results:  
No sound is produced.

Expected Results:  
I expect some sound from the speaker being tested. Preferably, identifying the speaker using the wav files in /usr/share/sounds/alsa

I have no other issues with sound. Everything works as expected. My alternative testing procedure is to type the following command into a terminal:

speaker-test -c 6 -t wav

And each channel plays a recorded voice (wav files are in /usr/share/sounds/alsa/) identifying the output correctly.
Comment 1 Karthik Periagaram 2012-12-01 20:25:21 UTC 
I forgot to add the versions of various components:

PulseAudio version 2.1
ALSA version 1.0.26
Phonon using the VLC backend, version 2.0.4

No /etc/asoundrc or ~/.asoundrc present.
Comment 2 Harald Sitter 2012-12-01 20:49:29 UTC 
tell your distro to build kde-runtime with libcanberra support and make sure the freedesktop-sound-theme is installed.
Comment 3 Karthik Periagaram 2012-12-01 23:02:01 UTC 
kde-runtime (called kdebase-runtime, in arch's packages) seems to be built with libcanberra support. It appears in the depends on array.

I did not have freedesktop-sound-theme (called sound-theme-freedesktop, in arch's packages), which I subsequently installed. That didn't fix things. I have even restarted the machine and still don't get any sound when I press those buttons.

Perhaps related: pressing the Test button in the previous, Device Preference tab plays the login sound and thus, works.

I started kcmshell4 kcm_phonon from the terminal, which launches and puts the following error on the terminal:

[0x12d9a38] main services discovery error: no suitable services discovery module

and each time I press a speaker test button, I get three of these:

ALSA lib pcm.c:2217:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM 0

Does that help?

(In reply to comment #2)
> tell your distro to build kde-runtime with libcanberra support and make sure
> the freedesktop-sound-theme is installed.
Comment 4 Harald Sitter 2012-12-01 23:08:58 UTC 
supposedly libcanberra-pulse needs to be installed and used, rather than libcanberra-alsa
Comment 5 Karthik Periagaram 2012-12-01 23:24:11 UTC 
Arch provides a libcanberra-pulse package. I installed that and the buttons work perfectly now.

Thanks for the help!

Solution:
Install the following packages (archlinux package names):
sound-theme-freedesktop
libcanberra-pulse

(In reply to comment #4)
> supposedly libcanberra-pulse needs to be installed and used, rather than
> libcanberra-alsa
Comment 6 Harald Sitter 2012-12-01 23:34:16 UTC 
You should still report this to the arch packagers. At least the sound theme should be a dependency of the runtime package (or arguably of libcanberra itself, as the specification that libcanberra implements mandates that the sounds provided by the theme package must be available). 
They may also be interested in a related ubuntu bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libcanberra/+bug/790608
Comment 7 Karthik Periagaram 2012-12-01 23:44:32 UTC 
Done: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/32931
Comment 8 Karthik Periagaram 2012-12-11 16:02:44 UTC 
A final update. Arch's libcanberra package now has a dependency on sound-theme-freedesktop. This issue shouldn't affect any more arch users.

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/32931

Thanks for all the help!