Phonon error - openSUSE Forums
I think I’ve seen other “solutions” as well, but a quick search did not reveal it (I probably had the wrong search parameters).
An odd sound at high volume? Perhaps that is distortion? … over driving of the speakers maybe ? This reads like a different problem.
If so, for this different problem, you could go to YaST > Hardware > Sound > Other > Volume and move both PCM and Master volume to high levels. Then close YaST. Next go to your mixer and adjust the level both PCM and Master volume to remove the distortion. Note every time you start a new multimedia application, the level of PCM may dynamically change, and you may need to re-adjust it.
I’m a user like yourself (ie not a developer) but from what I know, in KDE 4, the developers decided to use a new multimedia API, known as Phonon. Phonon provides a common interface on top of other systems, such as GStreamer. Phonon (software) - Wikipedia
Phonon is a new KDE technology, one of the purposes of which is to offer a consistent API to use audio or video within multimedia applications. The API is designed to be Qt-like, and as such, it offers KDE developers a familiar style of functionality. Phonon is not a new sound server, and it does not compete with xine, nor GStreamer, nor ESD, nor aRts, etc. Rather, due to the ever-shifting nature of multimedia programming, it offers a consistent API that wraps around these other multimedia technologies. Then, for example, if GStreamer developers decide to alter the GStreamer API, only Phonon needs to be adjusted, instead of each KDE application being forced to update individually to work with a revised GStreamer API (interface).
Phonon is powered by what the developers call “engines” and there is one engine for each supported backend.
The phonon-backend-gstreamer and phonon-backend-xine are two of the backends.