I have two soundcards in my system, one on the motherboard and a soundblaster.
I multiboot and all FIVE other images, including SUSE 10.1 with KDE 3, use the soundblaster so that is where the speakers are plugged in.
11.2 insists on configuring the motherboard sound card for KDE, even when I do a fresh install setting the soundblaster as the primary sound card at installation time or when I remove the motherboard sound card from the configuration after installation. KDE 4 never even lists the soundblaster as a known card.
You need to ensure that card-0 in YaST > Hardware > Sound is the card in which you wish the sound to come out of. You can either delete the ‘other’ card in **YaST > Hardware > Sound ** (temporary delete which only unconfigures that unwanted card, and note you can add it back later) or simply go to **YaST > Hardware > Sound > Other **and change the order of sound cards.
Then you need to go to KMENU > Configure Desktop > Multimedia and ensure the ORDER of sound devices you have there matches the order of sound devices you have in YaST > Hardware > Sound.
And in some cases (in ADDITION to the above) you also can run the diagnostic script:
/usr/sbin/alsa-info.sh
and examine the order of sound devices there to ensure it is the same.
The order of sound devices is critical to get this working.
If my memory serves me correct, the file /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf keeps a record of the sound card configuration (it used to be /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf, but I think it changed in 11.2). By running YaST you change the order of sound devices. YaST should have your sound blaster card listed (as should the 50-sound.conf file) assuming your hardware is not broken.
Progress … sort of. I now think KDE is trying to use the correct card.
Now I get a message box that pops up (briefly) when I try to start Kaffeine.
Notification from Phonon: KDE’s Multimedia Library
The audio playback device Ensoniq AudioPCI ENS1371 (ES1371
DAC2/ADC) does not work
Falling back to .
Play Test Sound on the card works in Yast>Hardware>Sound
I spot nothing that seems significant to me in /var/log/