Solution: opensuse 11.3 Intermittent no sound in Amorok after using Firefox

English Multimedia
21

Thank you very much jdmcdaniel3 and oldcpu.

The wait is over. After updating alsa driver to 1.0.23 echo of audio o/p has gone. Also VLC works perfectly.

Small issue though. Audio gets interrupted when i move the cursor (over the application) while playing video/songs.

22

Thank you steelskin for your reply. I have solved the problem as mentioned in my previous post. Also there i sno popup asking me to forget the device this time :slight_smile:

23

Does this issue still happen if you disable special desktop effects ?

24

Yes but the interruption is less. I also noticed that if I drag any window using mouse then the sound (song) becomes slow and noisy. This happens in all players (Amarok, VLC and Kaffeine).

25

Hmmm … can you advise as to what graphic card hardware you have, and what graphic card driver you are using? If you are using KDE desktop, you can look at the ‘My Computer’ icon on your desktop to get that information. If using a desktop other than KDE, you could type:

/sbin/lspci -nnk

and that will tell us what graphic card hardware in the section about “VGA”.

Note if this is ATI or nVidia hardware, the proprietary graphic drivers typically have better performance, and “mouse moves” with those drivers typically do not cause problems.

26

I use (& love) KDE version. Here is my hardware info :-

Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
Model: Radeon XPRESS 200M 5A62 (PCIE)
2D driver: radeon
3D driver: R300 classic (7.8.2)

As for as my knowledge is concern i have not installed any propitiatory driver for the ATI card and it seems to be difficult for my chip set. I have done some search for the model but there are too many packages and really confused.

Thank you.

27

Unfortunately I believe that your graphic card is considered a ‘legacy card’ by ATI and it is no longer supported. This means there is no proprietary ATI graphic driver for that graphic card for any of the Linux distributions packaged during the past couple of years.

Hence the ‘radeon’ driver is likely the ‘best performance’ driver you can use, and it is likely that driver will cause the effects you have seen. You could try different multimedia players (and note just Amarok, VLC and Kaffeine), as some are more efficient than others, and hence may work better.

28

I have the same problem (no sound in Amarok after using Firefox) with Amarok 2.4-GIT and KDE 4.6.0 on openSUSE 11.3.
and I actually don’t think that this is a solution to the problem, for me it seems just as a workaround.

I wish I could play music with Amarok and watch videos with sound on youtube without the need to restart firefox, amarok or alsa everytime.
I love openSUSE very much and use it as my primary OS.
I hate to say it but, it does not happen with other OS and this kind of things put away users from linux.

29

This can be worked around, but it does require more than basic knowledge. I have sound playing from amarok, xine, mplayer, vlc, firefox, all at once on my Linux PCs. This is NOT a Linux technical limitation, but it is NOT user friendly to setup.

There are a LOT of different Sound devices, and the entire sound software architecture is contributed by a miriad volunteers, so it is not surprising that this is complex in Linux.

Sorry to read that you failed to navigate through the acknowledged (by me) Linux complexity to set this up. As I note, it works for me.

30

Great for you that it is working for you, are you willing to share the steps to make it work on my pc as well ?
Or even point me to a forum thread which explain the steps ?
I have more than a basic knowledge in Linux and openSUSE.

Thanks,
Sagi.

btw : what I meant by : “it does not happen with other OS and this kind of things put away users from linux.” is that new users that hit this kind of a problem and have to play around with the bits and pieces of the OS won’t last long and will go back to the old and “good” OS that they are used too.

31

Of course I’m willing to share. I’ve done so in many threads. Many. However as I inferred, the PRECISE steps for the method I have used tend to be different for each PC I own (which have different hardware and different applications).

In general, there are two methods that I know of for applications to share the same hardware audio device (and then thus be able to play audio at the same time through the speakers).

  1. use the ALSA API in the output mode of the desktop and also of the multimedia applications. Only some (most actually) but NOT all hardware supports this. All my hardware supoprts this. The naming convention as to the audio output mode differs from application to application. Sometimes it is “alsa oss” other times it is “alsa api” … other times it is just “alsa” … it all depends on the app as to what it is called and it varies massively from app to app. Massively. In KDE I select the “xine backend” for the desktop (where firefox typically uses the desktop assigned backend, and I believe Amarok for KDE4 does the same). Then in xine (using the app xine-ui so as to tune xine) I select an output audio mode that allows the audio to be shared … etc … it requires some trial and error efforts but it is NOT difficult. Hence from then any xine app (such as amarok and firefox and desktop sounds) will share the sound audio device with any other app that also uses the ALSA API.
    .
  2. use pulse audio - this is supposed to be the replacement for the functionality that until now was available via the ALSA API. There are purportedly PULSE AUDIO gui that one can use to tune this - of which I know nothing

As for writting a detailed step by step infalible way of doing the above - I can not. I have written many guides, but the above I can not do. There are TOO MANY variables. Some one who has NOT lost touch with their inner newb (like I have - where unfortunately I do NOT know enough to advance beyond being an average user and am thus stuck in a no-mans-land where I am unable to guide newbs as well as I wish, and I am unable to understand advanced users) needs to write such a guide, if indeed it is even possible given the large number of variables. But the fact I can do this on over 1/2 dozen PCs and have it work on all suggests it is doable. Its just not user friendly.

Indeed and that is simply the way it is. Linux is NOT that easy in some respects. Its a nature of the beast in terms of who codes the software. Just how is open source software put together? Who participates in the appropriate forum or appropriate mailing list to have things coded ? Especially in areas which are important to one?

Well Linux is NOT like Windows nor like Mac OS/X in this area. Things get done in Linux becauses specific users want a specific thing fixed and THEY are willing to spend the time in the APPROPRIATE CHANNELS to have things done the way they think best. As I have noted many times, our forum is NOT such a channel. We try hard to provide support, but when it comes to changing Linux and changing openSUSE, the place is not our forum, but rather is the mailing lists, the developers IRC chat channels, and openFATE (where IMHO openFATE is NOT enough of itself, but rather one needs to lobby in the mailing lists and IRC chat to further get things moving). One thing for certain is our forum as of today is NOT the area to have changes done to openSUSE. We simply live with what we get, and we try to help our membership do the same. There are OTHER channels than our forum for changes.

Please, Good luck in your efforts and my best wishes. Stay well.