No channels in KMix 4.6.0

KMix 4.6.0 in OpenSUSE 11.4 (x86) doesn’t show up channels. It only shows “Internal sound Analog stereo”. So I can’t set the input/output channels and the headphone channel for my soundcard. The right soundcard drivers are installed (for Creative Sound Blaster Platinum Live Drive). Earlier versions of KMix worked just fine.

This is what I found in /home/user/kde4/share/config/kmixctric:

[MixerPulseAudio::Afspeelapparaten:1]
name=

[MixerPulseAudio::Afspeelstromen:1]
name=

[MixerPulseAudio::Opnameapparaten:1]
name=

[MixerPulseAudio::Opnamestromen:1]
name=

And I found this in home/user/kde4/share/config/kmixrc:

[Global]
MasterMixerDevice=alsa_output.pci-0000_00_0b.0.analog-stereo
Position=0,0
Size=250,313
Visible=false

The weird thing is on the other hand KAmix shows all channels properly. Also Audacity recognizes my soundcard properly for instance.

I uninstalled KMix, deleted the KMix-files and Kmix config files and installed KMix again. No result at all.

Has any one an idea?

Thanks in advance,
Willem Franssen

openSUSE 11.4 uses Pulseaudio and it is suggested that you load the mixer control pavucontrol. You can open YaST / Software / Software Management and search on pavucontrol and install it if it is not already. You can run it using the menu Run Command:

/usr/bin/pavucontrol

Give this a try and see if it is helpful to you.

Thank You,

PulseAudio takes a different approach and KMix follows that. You can of course disable P/A in YaST>Hardware>Sound>Other>PulseAudio… I don’t as I prefer the way P/A works in KDE 4.6.0 and it delivers very good sound here (as it does on Gnome since 11.3).

You have a master volume by left-click on KMix icon in system tray. The Mixer now has several tabs, separating output/input i.e. playback/capture. “Playback Devices” tab only has one channel per card/device, and if you right-click on that channel you can split it into two separately controlled channels. The other tabs get populated as applications make use of playback/capture through P/A. So you can control the volumes/levels of multiple application streams performing playback/capture.

PulseAudio and KDE Phonon control your sound card through the alsa drivers to the hardware. The Mixer also has Settings>Audio Setup which takes you to the KDE Phonon settings. As previously mentioned you may prefer to install and use “pavucontrol” which I think provides similar facilities to the KMix and Phonon settings. I haven’t needed to do so, but YMMV.

Why do you personally feel the need to set hardware channel levels manually. For example, does/did any user really need to set an alsa channel called PCM (what) to any value other than high? Let the system take care of that stuff. I don’t understand what you think you were missing? :slight_smile:

In kmix with pulsaudio, the trick is
Let’s say you click the kmix-playback devices, you hover the mouse on top of the slider control of e,g: internal audio analog surround control or high definition audio controller, just right click the mouse and you can change the settings.
You can mute/unmute, split the channels and so on. Hope this helps.

To jdmcdaniel, consused, conram,

I installed pavucontrol and other additional pulse audio packages.Does NOT solve the problem. You know, a proper mixer has to show up available channels like Mono, Stereo, Wave, Cd-digital, Synth, Headphone, SPDIF, Line, Mic, Aux, TAD, and so on. But KMix 4.6.0 does NOT. As a guitar player making home recordings sometimes, I have to be able to set channels of my choice. KAmix does show up all this stuff, KMix 4.60.0 doesn’t. Earlier versions of KMix did. And out of the box.

Another idea what to do?
Willem Franssen

well you can do as I did and delete pulseaudio, search for pulse in yast and uninstall everything but libpulse0 and libpulse-mainloop-glib0, (if you select those to uninstall you will get message that kde-base needs to be removed and you dont want that). reboot (desktop might not shutdown because it can’t play the bye bye sound, in that case use init 6 in a terminal) after the reboot you will have full alsa control like before 11.4

Hi Xilanaz.
I did everything you suggested. KMix is working fine now and shows all channels.
Thank you for your help.
Willem Franssen

Glad to read you managed to get this reading by removing pulse.

Having stated that, pulse should give you MUCH MORE controls. I just don’t know how to set it up properly, and with due respect to the great contributors we have on this forum, I don’t think many others know how either.

The problem here to a large extent is none of us know pulse all that well yet and hence we can not give much advice. And unfortunately many of the users who want the very advanced features for sound don’t have the time/patience to learns the ins and outs of pulse so as to show the rest of us how pulse can actually do this better. … Those who do know are not contributing. Hence the quick solution for those who don’t know is to simply remove pulse, and hence nothing moves forward in terms of guides/helping with the knowledge, etc … :frowning:

Some of us have spent time reading the stuff on the pulseaudio website. What I have read there, strongly suggests that the PulseAudio developers are of the opposite opinion to you i.e. there aim was to simplify the setup compared to straight alsa’s complicated channel configuration. That’s bad luck for musicians, such as the OP with his particular sound card deployment, because if they want to use openSUSE with KDE, disabling P/A is possibly the only way to go to support their old setup.

Even on the studio distros specializing in audio production for musicians, you will find disagreement on the suitability of P/A for serious/professional musicians.

Let’s not forget that it’s actually the Phonon/Solid combination that is supposed to take care of the hardware on KDE, not P/A. When I plug in my usb guitar effects processor (the guitar plugs into that processor), it is immediately picked up on KMix’s Capture Devices tab where I can apply volume adjustment, split channel, and mute settings. All the clever stuff is on the effects processor. Then I just need it connected to P/A supported recording/playback applications.

That is the kind of connectivity Pulse Audio appears to be aimed at, where many home users want to plug various accessories and gadgets into their laptops with ease, pick them up with favourite applications and multiple audio streams. The onboard chipsets are producing better and better sound. Windows and Apple have been setting the pace for many years in this marketplace. Since openSUSE is a general purpose distro, whether it’s with KDE or Gnome, it must head down this road.

Thank You x5!!!

Maybe we are talking different things here. I guess I had to put a qualification in my post that it applies to the problem as defined by the first post by the OP in this thread and not to the requirements of musicians out side of this thread. >:(

I never had control over individual sound devices in kmix to the extent that I have in pulse. I never had controls in kmix controlling the sound and device per application. In pulse I have far more controls.

If I select a 5.1 system in pulse, I get more controls more logically laid out in pulse than I ever did in kmix.

As for pulse working with complicated devices that are used by musicians, comparing that had never been the intent of my post.

In the first post the user talks about “input/output channels and the headphone channel” . If this is a post of a muscian looking for help with a complex device setup, then I misread it. But when I read that post again I see nothing stating that. Where am I missing that in the first post ? I find the layout of those equal or better in pulse (with pavucontrol).

Sure, if one changes the context of the original subject (and refers to musicians) then sure, my statement is not accurate.

Yes, it’s now clear we are not communicating successfully. From your previous:

Having stated that, pulse should give you MUCH MORE controls. I just don’t know how to set it up properly, and with due respect to the great contributors we have on this forum, I don’t think many others know how either.

Unfortunately, I did read that as “pulse[audio] should provide more controls [but doesn’t]”. If that were the case, your opinion would not agree with those of P/A devs. Those opinions are expressed in their responses to queries about sound-card channels previously presented by alsa-based mixers, now absent from mixers interfacing with pulseaudio. In spite of a response from P/A, the ticket containing that query/requirement is still open after 2 years of no resolution.

Since your follow-up post, I now realize that was a misinterpretation of your meaning, given some positive comments about the extra controls delivered by the Phonon/KMix settings (and delivered earlier by pavucontrol for Gnome on 11.3).

However as a contributor to the forum, I thought the comment about fellow contributors not knowing either, was unnecessary and unfounded, even when applied to yourself. And also this comment:

The problem here to a large extent is none of us know pulse all that well yet and hence we can not give much advice.

How do you know that to be the case? These “opinions” rather assume (wrongly in my view) that “how to set it up properly” is the outstanding question for user or contributor to answer in the PulseAudio environment. Although it’s a vital question in the Alsa environment, it doesn’t automatically follow for PulseAudio.

Perhaps the right question here is "Does P/A provide the right interface for setting up and adjusting a sophisticated multi-channel sound card, like the one the OP described in relation to his definition of a “proper mixer”. Everything I have read so far on the subject says that P/A is unsuitable for that type of device and user. My comments about serious musicians interfacing complex devices and setups was meant to underline that fact.

My own example of connecting a guitar effects processor (a device with lots of knobs, settings, and a display), for recording on a PC system, should work well with P/A. It’s not a multichannel device, and has a relatively simple codec-based and usb-connected interface.

It leads me to believe there are fundamental misunderstandings about where PulseAudio fits in, how it relates to Alsa, and the implications for users having openSUSE with PulseAudio as the default audio system on both KDE and Gnome.

If I select a 5.1 system in pulse, I get more controls more logically laid out in pulse than I ever did in kmix.

Not sure of your meaning there. Is that comparing pulse[audio] to old kmix/alsa, or just pavucontrol versus new KMix/Phonon settings i.e. same settings but presented differently?

As for pulse working with complicated devices that are used by musicians, comparing that had never been the intent of my post.

But not everything I posted was in reply to your previous post, apart from my first paragraph. I should have made that clearer.

If this is a post of a muscian looking for help with a complex device setup, then I misread it.

As it turned out, it was a post by a “musician” expecting a “proper mixer” able to support a multi-channel device (his sound card). Although that needed a question at the end of my post #3 to get that info. Initially the thread was all about KMix’s perceived inadequacy, due to a lack of basic research by an OP (IMO) who is obviously no novice on the subject of mixers and sophisticated soundcards.

I thought it might be useful for other forum users seeing these questions, to also have some appropriate answers to read. So here goes…

That is correct. PulseAudio is now enabled as the default audio system in openSUSE, so KDE, Phonon, and KMix all use the PulseAudio sound server. They don’t use the Alsa API directly.

KMix now shows one master volume/level channel per device. This is described by the PulseAudio site as “Generic hardware abstraction” providing for “individual volumes per application”. Basically this means that PulseAudio is built on top of sound drivers, enabling different programs to share the same sound device. However this approach also means that you loose some benefits of Alsa, e.g. low latency features, and also those multi-channel features of sound cards that are now hidden from applications (e.g. KMix) behind a generic interface.

The weird thing is on the other hand KAmix shows all channels properly.

Not sure what package the OP is referring to here. KAmix doesn’t show up in the standard 11.4 repos or packman-essentials.

Also Audacity recognizes my soundcard properly for instance.

Audacity uses the PortAudio API, and does recognize the soundcard as before. Audacity does not yet have native support for PulseAudio. It supports PulseAudio’s Alsa plug-in. Opening Audacity with Edit>Preferences>Devices set to “default”, places a volume channel for the Alsa plug-in on KMix’s Playback Streams tab.

I uninstalled KMix, deleted the KMix-files and Kmix config files and installed KMix again. No result at all.

That wouldn’t change anything as KMix configuration/settings are correct for operating with PulseAudio.

Has any one an idea?

Disable and/or remove PulseAudio, in order to revert back to using Alsa for your souncard, and the Alsa API for your audio applications including KMix.

I am very deceived of the audio changes made in OpenSuse 11.4. Things were a lot more simpler and working a lot better before.>:(

Im having a hard time with that Kmix on 11.4 aswell grrr.

Only way i could adjust the different volumes on the different channels was through YAST.
Kmix only allowed sound from my graphics card to be configured (HDMI).

Tried to change from the graphics card to my actual onboard sound card, but Kmix refused.

It is possible to use KMix to control Pulse Audio, and some other mixer or a plasmoid to control Alsa.

‘Gmixer’ even permits both at the same time, unfortunately it does not integrate that well into the desktop; read, no shortcuts, no systray etc
http://thumbnails27.imagebam.com/12815/bace99128143056.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/bace99128143056)

It would be great if KMix allowed control both over Pulse and Alsa at the same time, similar to Gmixer.

ETA: Maybe somebody knows a better mixer?

Doesn’t that rather depend on the use of two [or more] sound cards/chips, i.e. P/A uses one card/chip and Alsa uses the other? If so, it is important to mention that to avoid confusing users with only one card/chip.

For example with PulseAudio sound server using one sound card, it is not possible to use the Jack sound server with the same sound card. Currently, to use both sound servers on the same system requires each server to use a different sound card/chip.

No, it works for a single chip and does not depend on multiple ones. The way I understand it, with Pulse running, Alsa will still be running too. So, you can have an interface for Pulse (KMix, pavucontrol, Gmixer, veromix …) AND an interface for ALSA (YaST, Gmixer, plasmaVolume, alsamixer … ) at the same time.

An interface for Alsa may be necessary if you need to access the soundcard’s channels directly. For me this is the case with the various input jacks. With Pulse, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to adjust/mute the volume of either Rear Mic, Front Mic or Line-in *. With an interface to Alsa that is a snap.

  • Oh, I don’t need them all. Any one will do.

Hmm, I forgot that with only one sound chip here, as well as KMix I have alsamixer installed, but alsamixer still only shows single playback channel and single capture channel. This suggests to me that alsamixer is working through the P/A sound server.

In your Gmixer picture, you show “Alsa mixer” on two different devices: “NVidia” and “FM801”, I assume they are separate physical devices. What physical device is “PulseAudio Mixer” using?

Very astute observation. Yes, there are two soundcards shown in that picture. I have physically removed the FM801 just now though.

And from what I can see there is no change. I can still use Gmixer etc as an interface for the Alsa channels (not for the removed FM801 anymore of course) as well as as interface to Pulse. Alsamixer still shows the all the Alsa channels - no idea why that is different for you.