I have a Intel Chipset AC97 soundcard (m/b integrated). I tried several distros and had sound problems in most.
Finally, I installed OpenSuse two days ago and immediately had sound.
Yesterday, I was messing around trying to get restricted codecs to install and play, and completely messed up Linux. No worries, I just reinstall, right ? Since I had problems fixing the existing installation, I ended up erasing the partition and starting from scratch. Only that time, no sound. The mic appears to be working - there are bars showing that it’s recording - and the playback seems to happen except no sound is coming out.
I erased the conf for s/c and re-did the config in “System”, got some sound out of Kaffeine - very low-volume no matter what I tried - still no sound in Amarok.
I installed every GStreamer and Xine plugin I could find.
I could play in Amarok using Xine. I can’t play using GStreamer.
It appears that the default system setting is GStreamer. I can’t hear anything in eg Firefox. I can’t hear the test sound going into System->Hardware->Sound. So how do I use Xine as the default engine ?
I guess the question now becomes, how do I make Xine the system-wide playback engine instead of GStreamer ? (xine does work).
I can play WAV files in Amarok using Xine (not GStreamer) but I can’t play Youtube videos since I can’t find a way to set Xine as a default playback engine for Opera or Firefox.
Did you have a chance to follow the steps posted in the Stick post in multimedia?
I followed those steps and i was able to get my sound working until another update took place and now i am only able to get the sound to work with a stop and restart after a reboot.
If you get a chance check it out and maybe it will work for you. If not there is a section below the troubleshooting link for pulling additional information to post for future assistance.
However, can somebody answer my prior question - how do I make Xine the default engine on a system level. Xine works all the time, Gstreamer doesn’t work at all.
I did “sound->backend” but this fixed it until the next reboot.
BTW this is definitely not a hardware issue, I’ve installed a second s/c (Soundblaster) just to make sure, and got same problems with Xine working and GStreamer not. Looks like Gstreamer is broken.
Amarok and Kaffeine are purposely crippled to not play mp3 and DVDs, or use anything but the default (useless) codecs because it’s illegal in the USA. You need to change to the packman versions.
Try installing/running alsamixer, that might show up muted streams that other mixers don’t show.
I did. They play MP3. There’s no sound with GStreamer engine. There is sound with Xine engine. I have no sound in Youtube because the default systemwide engine is Gstreamer and I don’t know how to change this.
I kept messing with different sound components until I started to get sound in Opera / FFox, however it would be gone after reboot. I then realized that I still had my second sound card installed, even though in every place I set it as #1 (the default #0 is the AC97). So I pulled it out and did the reboot, and voila… I have sound.
Is there a way to save / backup all system configs ? I really don’t want to go through it all over again if I have to reinstall Suse…
To be extremely safe, back up all .* (dot-star) files and directories in /home/<user>, /root and also back up the entire /etc directory. You should also check the /opt directory.
That should cover 99% of all configs. Some apps will still store settings in non-standard places.