Since my 12.1 upgrade, I am having a problem that I have always encountered with earlier versions of OpenSuSE running KDE. KDE will not release the sound device to non-KDE software, such as VLC and Mplayer. Amarok works correctly. System sounds work correctly. Even “Yast Hardware” can play soundtest samples. The terminal output of the failing programs is always something similar to “cannot lock sound device” or "cannot lock /dev/snd/dsp.
With 11.4 and earlier, I could run “rcalsasound restart” and things would be back to normal. Since the insertion of “systemctl”, my old fix no longer works. When run, that command simply prompts “redirecting to systemctl” and nothing happens. Even “rmmod snd-virtuoso -f, followed by modprobe snd-virtuoso” has no effect.
I do not use pulse audio, as my sound device is 7.1 and pulse does a very poor job of utilizing it. IMHO, alsa is the only sound system that belongs on a Linux box. My question is, how do I force Phonon to release the sound system?
I would check the PCM level within Kmix, it often default to zero in my experience.
Also, the ‘dsp’, ‘mixer’ and ‘audio’ modules aren’t loaded at boot time anymore so you may not run ‘OSS’ applications with ‘ALSA’ unless you modprobe oss: modprobe snd-pcm-oss (you also need the alsa-oss package installed)
Cheers