my all audio/video files can be opened via VLC player but I can just ‘see’ them working properly … I can’t listen to them.
Should I configure something ?
In Ubuntu Linux , I could do this without any configuration.
please let me know the solution.
Make sure you followed the multimedia guide
Multi-media and Restricted Format Installation Guide
And that VLC you have is from Packman!
I had to change the sound setting in VLC prefs to UNIX OSS
But I prefer smplayer for most playback, I use VLC only for .iso files
After setting up my vlc (close to the guidelines suggested by caf4926), on my two openSUSE-11.4 partitions (which are on different PCs, one with LXDE and one with KDE4) I found it additionally necessary to install the application ‘pavucontrol’ and then while trying to play an application with vlc, also run the application ‘pavucontrol’ and tune pulse audio for vlc. That was only necessary once, as settings were saved after that. Here are a couple images of using pulse (in this case, I was tuning for ‘smplayer’, and also, the PC used in this example has two hardware audio devices) :
This first image is where I tune the hardware audio device
http://thumbnails32.imagebam.com/12858/b00454128570044.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/b00454128570044)
Click on image for larger presentation
This second image is where I select the specific hardware audio device for the application smplayer and tune the volume settings …
http://thumbnails35.imagebam.com/12858/35db6f128570047.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/35db6f128570047)
Click on image for larger presentation
An advantage of pulse audio is I can select which audio device an application will play sound to. I can also have different volume settings on different applications.
I think there may be a strange problem with VLC, and so far I have only used VLC on KDE, and Kaffeine works properly with the same operation. On one 11.4 installation, if I move a video forward a significant portion of the transport, by clicking on the slider (or grabbing and moving it), the sound disappears abruptly but video continues from the new position.
Closing and restarting VLC clears it, but so does changing a VLC setting during the muted playback and saving it. It’s reproducible in spite of keeping VLC updated and there have been many VLC updates from Packman.
I have other KDE installations that don’t do this with VLC. BTW, I haven’t had to change sound setting in VLC prefs (e.g. UNIX OSS) or magically run pavucontrol on any of my installations to get sound from PulseAudio. That’s in spite of regarding pavucontrol as an applet with a neater UI design.
I’m wondering if your NOT needing to ‘magically’ (to use your words) to run pavucontrol could be hardware specific ? ie your hardware is different. IMHO there is no magic here. There are typically good reasons why some users require different actions from other users.
While I have tested 11.4 from liveCD on 6 different PCs, I have only installed it on 2 different PCs. Each of these two PCs where I installed 11.4 has more than one audio device and in each case I needed to use pavucontrol. In some of the liveCD test cases I needed to use pavucontrol, and in other cases I did not.
My sandbox PC (an old athlon-1100 w/1GB RAM) has motherboard sound, and also a PCI sound card. I do not nomimally have speakers plugged into each sound device (but rather I ‘pick one’) and realistically its not possible for any software to read my mind and guess which device I want sound to come out of. The openSUSE installer can (and does) guess wrong 50% of the time (when one has 2 devices).
My other PC with multiple audio devices is my Intel Core i7 920 which has a motherboard for onboard analog sound, and HDMI, and it has a USB webcam. I’ve seen openSUSE-11.4 on multiple occasions configure the web cam as the sound device (which is a bit strange since that device has no audio output). Still, having typed that, there is also the need for the openSUSE installer to choose between HDMI and analog audio, and IMHO realistically its not possible for any software to read my mind and guess which device I want sound to come out of (I don’t use WEBcam nor HDMI for audio output).
Hmm, not noticed much hardware differentiation before when pavucontrol has been suggested as a possible panacea. Of course there should be no magic, but in the absence of “typically good reasons” being attributed on a per-problem basis, it’s going to remain as “magical”. Unfortunately some posters now seem to think we are wizards able to cast spells and conjure up solutions without knowing anything about their audio hardware, openSUSE version, or type of DE. How did that happen on the openSUSE forum?
More specifically in this thread, what hardware did you have in mind? 
Leaving aside the question of the openSUSE installer’s inability to handle multiple sound cards (I make no comment on that), are you saying YaST>Hardware>Sound cannot configure two or more sound cards?
My Intel GM45 only has onboard sound, HDMI, and a built-in webcam IIRC that needs a usb driver. (I don’t use webcam, or HDMI for audio output at the moment). However if I plug in another audio device, it is picked up by KDE System Settings>Phonon. Are you saying that KDE Phonon doesn’t provide for selection, some configurating, and testing of multiple sound cards/devices?
In addition to those KDE facilities, AFAICT in the PulseAudio environment KMix only offers the abillty to select devices (also split channels) and applications to change their playback volumes or capture levels.
My questions are genuine. If pavucontrol is required to overcome limitations in YaST and KDE, then something needs to be done about it because on a KDE installation it isn’t installed by default.
Since you ask, the audio hardware on my PCs are:
My rather ancient Sandbox PC, which is an athlon-1100 CPU running on an equally ancient MSI MS-6380E motherboard with the mother sound and a separate PCI sound card:
!!Soundcards recognised by ALSA
!!-----------------------------
0 [V8233A ]: VIA8233A - VIA 8233A
VIA 8233A with ALC650D at 0xdc00, irq 22
1 [AudioPCI ]: ENS1371 - Ensoniq AudioPCI
Ensoniq AudioPCI ENS1371 at 0xec00, irq 17
with loaded alsa modules snd_via82xx and snd_ens1371
And my 2 year old main PC, which is has a Core i7 920 CPU running on an Asus P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard with a webcam plugged in:
!!Soundcards recognised by ALSA
!!-----------------------------
0 [Intel ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel (AD1989B)
HDA Intel at 0xf7cf8000 irq 63
1 [U0x46d0x821 ]: USB-Audio - USB Device 0x46d:0x821
USB Device 0x46d:0x821 at usb-0000:00:1d.7-5, high speed
The above was run in openSUSE-11.3 where the HDMI is not showing up in 11.3 (but it does in 11.4). I don’t use HDMI so I prefer it not showing up. The above has loaded alsa modules snd_hda_intel and snd_usb_audio.
Yes, and No. 1st I do not think one can realisticly ignore the failure of the openSUSE installer to sort multiple sound cards. Possibly some sort of installer improvement may be useful there, where users can easier test their sound cards during the install to ensure the correct one is configured. But your point is noted, as the failure of the openSUSE installer to make it easy for users with multiple sound cards to configure their sound device is likely not an issue relevant to your points.
Reference YaST > Hardware > Sound, it works on 11.3 and earlier openSUSE versions to configure sound with KDE (and pulse audio disabled). As soon as pulse audio was enabled, this did not work in openSUSE-11.4 and I made many posts about this during the 11.4 milestone and RC development phases. There should be no surprise there because of my copious posts.
I’m not saying that. Whether that is the case I do not know. What I do know is in 11.3 and earlier, YaST > Hardware > Sound with KDE could sort the audio devices. In openSUSE-11.4 with pulse audio, YaST > Hardware > Sound with KDE could not sort the audio. With pulse audio (with its extra layer introduced) I needed pavucontrol to sort this.
Indeed it is not (installed by default).
If one visits the Fedora forums a lot, one will read a reasonable percentage of users who use Fedora’s Gnome (with multiple sound cards) will struggle with their audio and invariably the suggestion they are given to sort the problem which usually works is to install ‘pavucontrol’. So this is more than just a KDE issue. IMHO its a pulse audio issue.
I guess I should also qualify this by stating this is deliberate self inflicted pain.
I don’t need two audio devices on my PCs.
I deliberately installed such a 2nd audio device on my Sandbox PC some years back, so that I could better understand some of the issues with multiple audio devices. There was a time some years back, when a number of new openSUSE users with multiple audio devices were complaining openSUSE audio did not work with multiple audio devices, and the experienced openSUSE users were not chiming in to correct the misunderstanding. Once I had two audio devices on my sandbox PC, I was able to confirm to my satisfaction that for openSUSE-11.3 and earlier, it was often just a simple matter of configuring one’s audio devices in YaST and ensuring the KDE desktop settings matched (and that worked most, but not all, of the time). And thus I was able to help such users a bit better.
I don’t have any complaints wrt openSUSE here, for with my PC hardware and my experience, with all openSUSE versions there are typically approches I can take to get the audio working properly.
Ah, you must be referring to this question:
More specifically in this thread, what hardware did you have in mind?
Really, it wasn’t your hardware details that were missing from this thread. The problem statement of this thread doesn’t specify any hardware, let alone two soundcards, so where is the relevance to this thread. In the same paragraph, I wrote about this being a current problem for “some posters” along with other missing system information, because it appears to be on the increase amongst OP’s. However, a separate paragraph for that in my post might have helped. Without that information, any solutions such as “installing pavucontrol” can only be a “shot in the dark”. The OP hasn’t told us whether the DE’s standard media player is able to provide any sound.
I agree with you, if there is a need for installer improvements re detection, configuration, and choice of multiple sound cards. However, as you noted, I wanted to focus on YaST>Hardware>Sound as the tool for manual selection and low-level configuration of any detected cards. I knew there were previous issues claimed for multiple cards, but wanted confirmation if the tool cannot facilitate multiple cards on the current release of openSUSE (KDE or Gnome). So no surprises there, and BTW I am familiar with how YaST behaves for a single audio card/chip.
The DE shouldn’t make any difference at the YaST>Hardware level, now Pulse/Audio can be enabled on KDE/Gnome. Now YaST>Hardware>Sound>Other>Volume only shows the start-up/default levels as far as the basic operating system is concerned. That’s logical since higher-level interfaces will be used to change audio levels.
In openSUSE-11.4 with pulse audio, YaST > Hardware > Sound with KDE could not sort the audio. With pulse audio (with its extra layer introduced) I needed pavucontrol to sort this.
That says the use of KDE System Settings>Phonon, including the extra tabs, wasn’t attempted. Although in combination with KMix that should provide the same features as “pavucontrol”, or it means that KDE [4.6.0] has failed to provide proper control for PulseAudio. That would be a KDE issue. It would be better for the openSUSE KDE experience if the provided tools work OOTB, with no further intervention or action required.
Gnome is a different case as I don’t believe it uses Phonon/Qt and KMix for audio device control as KDE does. Pavucontrol may be the only solution for Gnome, it’s a gtk applet, and IIRC installed by default on openSUSE Gnome.
Thats a good point. My Sandbox PC with the VIA 8233A with ALC650D (on the motherboard) and also an Ensoniq AudioPCI card (ENS1371) runs only LXDE desktop, so its similar to Gnome desktop in Pulse consideration.
My Core i7 920 with the HDA Intel (AD1989B) and also with a USB-Audio Device (ie only a USB webcam mic) is running KDE4 on 11.4. So if there were custom Phonon settings there, I may have missed them, although I did have all the nominal alsa settings in place and did look to see what backend was selected. I did not install any extra phonon apps as pavucontrol “did the trick” for me in obtaining sound.
One thing I discovered on the Core i7 920 during 11.4 milestone and RC live CD boots/tests (with KDE and Gnome liveCDs) was if I removed the USB webcam before the install, getting sound to work was a LOT easier, as the openSUSE installer would see only one device and not try to use the webcam as the audio device. For some reason the openSUSE installer consistently kept using the USB webcam device as the default audio device upon a liveCD boot.
Was pavucontrol installed along with LXDE, or did you have to add it?
My Core i7 920 with the HDA Intel (AD1989B) and also with a USB-Audio Device (ie only a USB webcam mic) is running KDE4 on 11.4. So if there were custom Phonon settings there, I may have missed them, although I did have all the nominal alsa settings in place and did look to see what backend was selected. I did not install any extra phonon apps as pavucontrol “did the trick” for me in obtaining sound.
The KDE phonon settings should still be there, e.g in the device list, you can change device priorities and use sound test. Does Phonon list the webcam as a device? There is a new tab for configuring speakers etc, and the old Backends tab (gstreamer and xine by default now). I’m on 11.3 right now, so don’t have that new tab to check it. I’m not aware of any “extra Phonon apps”, but KMix includes an “audio setup” in Settings which brings up the Phonon panel from KDE settings. That suggests KMix is meant to front-up audio device control on KDE. I know that combo is enough for my audio config where pavucontrol is not essential.
It had to be installed separate.
… back to this earlier question of yours:
I just briefly rebooted to 11.4 KDE4 on my Core i7 (note I normally run 11.3 on this PC for some various reasons) and checking what the menu’s look like, my memory comes back and indeed after the fresh install I did try to configure the sound with phonon. It did not work (back then). I had tried many setting combinations via phonon/yast. Only pavucontrol restored sound.
Phonon lists it (the usb webcam) only as an audio capture device. Not as an audio output device. BUT output sound could not be configured by me using the YaST/KDE_Phonon combo. I had to use pavucontrol.
I concede I am not that familiar with pulse, but its not as if I have never encountered anything to do with sound on openSUSE before. I think I know a small number things about Linux sound theory and the openSUSE way of setting up sound.
No, IMHO there is something here either non-functional here with openSUSE-11.4’s KDE/pulse combo configuration tools (which can EASILY be addressed using pavucontrol) or there is something seriously user unfriendly with KDE sound configuration tools (IMHO).
Back to the original post in this thread, … on my openSUSE-11.4 tumbleweed install (on an LXDE desktop) I found in order to get a pulse audio output selection in vlc I had to also install the application (from packman) vlc-aout-pulse.
It would be better to have pavucontrol installed by default on LXDE, if you still have influence there…
BTW, this is what the project responsible for pavucontrol says about it:
PulseAudio Volume Control (pavucontrol) is a simple GTK based volume control tool (“mixer”) for the PulseAudio sound server. In contrast to classic mixer tools this one allows you to control both the volume of hardware devices and of each playback stream separately.
If you substitute Qt/Phonon for GTK, that could describe KMix (in combo with KDE Phonon settings) on openSUSE 11.4/KDE 4.6. Pavucontrol from version 0.9.9 allows for configuring device ports. The developer responsible for “adding PulseAudio support to the various parts of KDE that need it (Phonon, KMix)” claims that what he found missing from those components were “a card profile selector, and a sink/source port selector”. He implemented those in the “Speaker Setup” tab at KDE System Settings>Multimedia>Phonon panel, and that appeared as part of KDE 4.6. That confirms the theory anyway.
BTW, most KDE apps (e.g. KMix) use the Phonon API, and Phonon accesses PulseAudio through its gstreamer and xine backends. It was a broken xine backend that held up KDE’s full P/A implementation.
Phonon lists it (the usb webcam) only as an audio capture device. Not as an audio output device. BUT output sound could not be configured by me using the YaST/KDE_Phonon combo. I had to use pavucontrol.
I’m not totally clear on this. The audio capture device sounds right for your USB webcam Mic, doesn’t it? Why would it be listed as an output device, unless there was a bug in the actual hardware detection further down the chain? Is the HDA Intel (AD1989B) listed as “Internal Audio …” or similar in Phonon’s Output Device list?
The USB Webcam to the best of my recollection was always listed (in KDE4 configure desktop/phonon) as an audio capture device (which is correct). It was not listed as an audio output device.
But regardless, on my 11.4 KDE4 PC, if I booted a liveCD with the webcam plugged in, audio could only be made to function by me if I installed pavucontrol (which imho provides superior device control). IF I booted a liveCD with the webcam NOT installed, audio ‘just worked’ (no pavucontrol needed).
Trial and error proved that the webcam being plugged in, or not being plugged in, affected the output audio. I don’t know the code, so I can’t say why.
I installed 11.4 with the webcam plugged in (which was not likely the smartest move) and as a result I predictably needed ‘pavucontrol’. Once I discovered how well ‘pavucontrol’ worked easily, I stopped my efforts to tune KDE4/phonon (which I had spent some wasted time on previously in various milestone and RC (and finally GM) versions of openSUSE-11.4).
Back to the original post in this thread, … on my openSUSE-11.4 tumbleweed install (on an LXDE desktop) I found in order to get a pulse audio output selection in vlc I had to also install the application (from packman) vlc-aout-pulse.
Stumbled on this oldcpu when I was googling Tumbleweed – and now my mute vlc in Tumbleweed is audible again, thanks.
Back in my post #9 I wrote:
Pavucontrol may be the only solution for Gnome, it’s a gtk applet…
That also is not strictly correct, since I was overlooking Gnome’s “Sound Preferences”, available via right-click on speaker icon in system tray. That appears to have similar functions to “pavucontrol”. Those functions are: sound hardware device selection and configuration, input/output volume control of hardware devices and separate playback streams (applications). “Sound Preferences” has some extras, including speaker testing. The presentations are somewhat different, and some users may prefer one UI design over the other, but functionally for P/A they appear to be equivalent.
On the subject of installing VLC on Gnome, so far I haven’t needed to install the package vlc-aout-pulse. I assume that’s because I’m not using an external audio output device on that system (e.g. external speakers).