Lost sound in totem, vlc, mplayer, flash, banshee etc

[ivom66]

I am really a Ubuntu user who is trying openSUSE, and so far, after initiall glitches, things seem to work except for the occasional sound problems.

Instead of playing CLI sound test (which looks obscure and difficult to remember), I click on Test buttons either on Gstreamer Properties or on Sound Preferances window.

If I hear a tone, I know the sound works.

The following scenario always worked for me for totem:

1. On Gstreamer set audio to ALSA (everywhere).
2. alsa-init

I do not know what is causing ALSA to fail, there must be some application that does that. It never happened to me on Ubuntu. When I look at /var/log/messages I see a lot of alsa related errors:

k.c: Error opening PCM device front:0: Device or resource busy
Jun 28 11:30:19 CPE001a9229e9e6-CM001225dff0aa pulseaudio[9922]: module-alsa-sink.c: Error opening PCM device front:0: Device or resource busy
Jun 28 11:32:35 CPE001a9229e9e6-CM001225dff0aa pulseaudio[9922]: module-alsa-sink.c: Error opening PCM device front:0: Device or resource busy
Jun 28 11:32:35 CPE001a9229e9e6-CM001225dff0aa pulseaudio[9922]: module-alsa-sink.c: Error opening PCM device front:0: Device or resource busy

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by nimajiman

1. Totem still has no sound.

What sort of file are you trying to play? What sound engine is totem using with those files? I never use totom, so I can't give advise, ... only ask questions that YOU should be asking. Do you have w32codec-all installed?

Originally Posted by nimajiman

3. Mplayer crashes if I set it to ALSA.

I have my mplayer set to xv and alsa. I use smplayer as a front end to mplayer. And I never run 3D desktop effects. But if you are using 3D desktop effects you may have to set this to x11.

Now, if you wish to play multiple sound players (or devices that use sound) at once, then I have read you must make sure all sound apps use the device name alsa or default and NOT hw nor OSS nor plughw:0,0 because these do NOT allow mixing. Hence you must get your players functioning with alsa.

[sirguy]

I'm having the exact same problem. After I installed Opensuse 11 on Monday I had sound. I lost sound in Gnome and KDE 4.X. As I began to patch the system and install additional software. I noticed I lost sound Totem and then VLC in gnome. I could still get sound in KDE 4. Then after a few days I lost sound in KDE4 so I went into KDE3. After about a two days I lost sound there also. So far I have tried various things I've seen posted and I still haven't found anything that works. I can't wait to see what the bug is.

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by sirguy

I'm having the exact same problem. After I installed Opensuse 11 on Monday I had sound. I lost sound in Gnome and KDE 4.X. As I began to patch the system and install additional software. I noticed I lost sound Totem and then VLC in gnome. I could still get sound in KDE 4. Then after a few days I lost sound in KDE4 so I went into KDE3. After about a two days I lost sound there also. So far I have tried various things I've seen posted and I still haven't found anything that works. I can't wait to see what the bug is.

I don't think there is a bug that completely blocks sound. I have the latest updates to my test box with openSUSE-11.0 and KDE-3.5.9, and sound "just works" with vlc, mplayer, flash, xine ... etc ....

Maybe you need to disable pulse audio? Try the solution of this user:
sontek ( John M. Anderson ) » Achieve Zen with openSUSE 11.0 (i.e Get rid of pulse audio)
which is to remove alsa-plugins-pulse

[sirguy]

Originally Posted by oldcpu

I don't think there is a bug that completely blocks sound. I have the latest updates to my test box with openSUSE-11.0 and KDE-3.5.9, and sound "just works" with vlc, mplayer, flash, xine ... etc ....

Maybe you need to disable pulse audio? Try the solution of this user:
sontek ( John M. Anderson ) » Achieve Zen with openSUSE 11.0 (i.e Get rid of pulse audio)
which is to remove alsa-plugins-pulse

I may give that a TRY. I will also use my 90 day installation support. I haven't made a support call since suse 9.0. or 9.1. but I might make one on this problem to see what the official word from Novell support is on this.

My guess on the cause may have to do with user hardware. I have an ASUS m3a MB which has an on board 8ch HD Audio system (Azalia ). Especially if this isn't happening across the board. On the other hand it worked after initial installation before I began updating the system and adding the abilities to play all types of multimedia.

[nimajiman]

@ivom66 - I am also a ubuntu user who is giving suse a try. It's a shame about these audio problems because I never had them in ubuntu. Despite these I am really liking suse so far so I'm reluctant to throw in the towel, although a desktop without sound is not of great use to me.

@olcpu

I never use totom, so I can't give advise, ... only ask questions that YOU should be asking. Do you have w32codec-all installed?

I wish I knew more of the kinds of questions I should be asking to get this working but unfortunately Im still a bit of a newb

However - I did not have w32codec-all installed previously but do now, although it made no difference. I was hoping that was why I was having trouble playing mp3's in Banshee but it must be the same issue thats preventing totem and possible mplayer.

I have my mplayer set to xv and alsa. I use smplayer as a front end to mplayer. And I never run 3D desktop effects. But if you are using 3D desktop effects you may have to set this to x11.

I think I am just running mplayer (if starting from command line I type 'gmplayer'). I do have compiz running, but if i start mplayer from cl and open an .avi with audio set to ALSA, the error msgs seem to be audio related not video related. I can post some output if your interested.

I think for the moment I will try removing alsa-plugins-pulse as suggested in the last few posts and see if that works. Otherwise, I will probably do a fresh install (thank God I installed /home on a separate partition this time ), and then carefully reinstall codecs and software and see if there is a particular package that causes these sound crashes (assuming I get the same problem).

I'll update further if I have any success.

[ivom66]

nimajiman: I do not think you need to re-install everything.

If you read the following thread:
openSUSE problems - a short list - openSUSE Forums
You will see the steps I went through:

1. Remove VLAN repository and keep packman only
2. Set alsa instead of automatic in the audio properties (I'm using Gnome)
3. Set VLC to OSS, everything else is set more or less to ALSA, with the exception of Realplyer, which you may want to download and install version 11 anyway - version 11 uses Alsa.