No sound in KDE 4

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#1

Hello.

I’m not yet using KDE 4 as my main desktop yet, for the time being it’s just been something I play around with to see what progress has been made. However something that’s always bugged me is an inability to get sound from any KDE app or for that matter the desktop itself.

I’m running KDE 4.0.4 along side 3.5.9, though I’m using a different user account for when I log in using KDE 4. I can get sound from non kde 4 applications. I’ve also recently added my extra user account to the audio group but that hasn’t done any good.

My sound card is a Dell 5.1 Soundblast live, it’s picked up in yast and Kmix(KDE4) but not in the sound settings in the new KDE control centre (see screenshot). So I don’t think it’s a hardware problem.

It’s not a major problem but I’m interested in getting to the bottom of it if anyone has any ideas or suggestions. It’s about time I learnt something about the sound system in Linux.

Currently I’m using openSUSE 10.3.
Thank you for any help in advance.

Here is a screenshot of the control centre: http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/2192/soundconfgkde4ub3.th.png](http://img380.imageshack.us/my.php?image=soundconfgkde4ub3.png)

#2

You could check to see if it is a pulse audio problem …

If you think it might be pulse audio problem, try some of the suggestions that are here:
openSUSE Forums - View Single Post - Amarok won’t play songs

Failing that you could remove pulse audio and give it a try …

And a big CAVEAT on my suggestions above … I don’t use KDE-4.

#3

Did pulseaudio ship with 10.3? :confused:

#4

Not to my knowledge … but given you have updated your KDE to 3.5.7 to 3.5.9, and also updated (different user) to KDE-4 …I don’t know what, if anything else, you have updated.

To re-iterate “a big CAVEAT on my suggestions above … I don’t use KDE-4”.

#5

I haven’t added pulseaudio to my knowledge and given that pulseaudio commands produce a ‘command not found’ response I’m guessing it’s not installed.

Though I can’t think of a reason as to why it would get on my system without me knowing about it. I’ve left the sound system pretty much well alone.

#6

You could try a live CD with KDE4 on it. Test your sound on your PC with the live CD. If it works, then compare the KDE4 settings on that live CD to what you have on your 10.3 with KDE4.

#7

Thanks for the suggestion, certainly worth a try. Will have to get some blank CD’s first.