Hello,
I have an issue. When ever I watch a movie, listen to something on Internet radio or nearly anything else, I have sound. However when ever I play a game or any application, I have none. It seems to me like this may be a very simple group/user issue. Any help?
Thanks.
A few questions
Have you changed any of the Pulse Audio default packages?
Can you give an example of one or two of the game names.
If you try and launch one of the games from console does it give you any error output and if yes can you paste it in a reply.
Some games that do not have sound would be Assault Cube, Battle Tanks and Tremulous. About running it from the terminal, I ran Tremulous and this was the output regarding anything audio:
Initializing SDL audio driver…
SDL audio driver is “(UNKNOWN)”.
SDL_OpenAudio() failed: No available audio device
Sound intialization failed.
Thanks.
Suggest you check in Yast that you have your sound device configured correctly.
Apologies caf4926, … but the user noted when ever they watch a movie, listen to something on Internet radio or nearly anything else, the have sound.
Why would going into yast help? Would that not just increase the risk of causing more problems? …
My guess is the games need to be configured for audio. Perhaps the games are looking for OSS, and the user does not have the OSS emulator (alsa-oss) installed? Or perhaps the games have an option that requires tuning. I think the user needs to search on EACH game, looking for how they adjust their game’s audio, and how they can tune their game’s audio for different configurations.
Audio works great in the only game I play (chess). There is not supposed to be audio in chess , and that works ! 
Apologies caf4926, … but the user noted when ever they watch a movie, listen to something on Internet radio or nearly anything else, the have sound.
Quite correct. My mistake. Didn’t read it carefully enough.
My guess is the games need to be configured for audio.
I agree.
Follow oldcpu’s advice. He’s streets ahead of us on this subject anyway.
the user does not have the OSS emulator (alsa-oss) installed
I installed it, however nothing seems to have changed. When I looked at the settings in YasT and tried to test my audio I received this warning:
audiotestsrc wave=sine freq=512 ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink profile=music: Could not get/set settings from/on resource.
And once again, thanks oldcpu and caf4926.
If you open console then enter
SDL_AUDIODRIVER=esd (press enter)
tremulous-wrapper (or alternative problem game name and press enter)
does that give you sound in the game?
king@linux-jkzv:~> SDL_AUDIODRIVER=esd
king@linux-jkzv:~> tremulous-wrapper
bash: tremulous-wrapper: command not found
It cannot find the command.
OK try as above using tremulous instead of tremulous-wrapper
Sadly, this does not give me sound.
Thanks for the help too.
I’m starting to think that my audio card is not set up properly. Is there a way to do an initial start up configuration?
Going on your initial quote above. You HAVE sound, just NOT in Games. Is that still correct?
So the issue is not that the hardware is not working or configured at the hardware level, but that the software is not configured.
By all means, double check you have the sound card set as soundcard 0 (primary) and the correct driver.
I can’t remember if you said - are you kde4?
To clarify a few things:
I have sound. But not in most applications.
I am using Gnome. Never a big fan of KDE however 4.0 has promise.
And how would I check if it is set as my main sound card?
Yast - Hardware - Sound
Select the card you are using in the list (often, if you have a sound card you may also have on-board - So there will be 2 cards in the list)
Go to the ‘other’ button
set as primary
The card is set as the default card. But is there a way I could give a application the “rights” to use the sound card?
What are the contents of
/etc/modprobe.d/sound
What applications have asked for ‘rights’?
Name some that don’t play sound
options snd slots=snd-hda-intel
rKvl.p67PfMCNM68:MCP55 High Definition Audio
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
No applications have asked for rights if there is such a thing. And some applications that do not play sound would be BZFlag, Termulous, AssaultCube, and Pidgin.
> some applications that do not play sound would be BZFlag
hmmmm…BZFlag has sound…i guess it can be turned off, but why
would anyone?
–
DenverD (Linux Counter 282315) via NNTP, Thunderbird 2.0.0.14, KDE
3.5.7, SUSE Linux 10.3, 2.6.22.18-0.2-default #1 SMP i686 athlon
Alright. I did some more testing if you will to see what works and what doesn’t to hopefully narrow down to what the real issue is.
First, when attempting to play a .ogg file (that way it is not a closed source mp3 issue) in totem I get an error saying that it could not get/set settings from/on resource. It plays in VLC.
When attempting to play the same file in gxine it says the xine engine failed to start. Any relationship?
In Amarok it reports this error:
Audio output unavailable; the device is busy.
xine parameters:
Nothing happens in Banshee. No errors. No sounds.
Thanks for all the help.