KDE Sound System replacement

English Multimedia
#1

Hi,
after recently installing KDE 4.2 (openSUSE 11.1), I noticed error messages during logon and logoff. I was advised to work through the 10 step multimedia check, which I did. I now have all these multimedia apps which appear to work, but the KDE sound system still won’t work. In fact, I get more error messages than before.
I posted in my details as per the 10 step check but have gotten no response.
Using the Notifications applet, I tried to setup a replacement for the KDE sound system. I tried /usr/bin/banshee-1. This gets rid of all the logon/logoff error messages. Instead Banshee starts up.
Can I configure the banshee to act as the external player? Is there another alternative?
What is the KDE Sound System? I understand aRTS has been replaced in KDE4?

cheers
Russell Thamm

#2

You seem to be approaching this the wrong way. Have you been through the audio troubleshooter: SDB:AudioTroubleshooting - openSUSE

Could it be as simple as choosing the correct channel from the kmix settings in the systray?

#3

The original problem appeared to be that the KDE Sound System was incompatible with the installed libraries, in particular GStreamer.
Further, complying with the 10 step multimedia check broke it worse (now it complains about xine as well). The SDB Audio Trouble Shooting FAQ doesn’t mention either xine or gstreamer.
It would help if I knew what the KDE 4.2 Sound System was - is it aRTS, alsa, pulseaudio, phonon or something else?
Sound works fine in Gnome, so is the Gnome system different from the KDE system?
Sounds play fine with banshee in KDE

#4

Did you bother to check out the Links on the troubleshooting guide? Look at the audio troubleshooting guide under “Links”:
SDB:AudioTroubleshooting - Links - openSUSE

Second Link from the top of the Links gives you a references called “sound concepts”. Take a look there. Sound-concepts - openSUSE

#5

Solved.
I noticed that kmix would never start, so I updated kmix. This fixed my sound problem. Strangely kmix still will not run. Further the sound test in the YAST Sound Applet still does not play any sounds.
But the error messages are gone, knotify sounds work, the multimedia applet starts.
As a bonus, the annoying bug with Kickoff appears to be fixed.