Update KDE, and now no sound

driptray · 12-22-2004, 06:26 AM

A few days ago I did my semi-regular apt-get system upgrade on my Debian unstable
system, which included upgrading much of KDE to 3.3.1-3.

And when I restarted KDE I got the dreaded artsmessage:

Code:

Sound server informational message:
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device /dev/dsp can't be opened (No such device)
The sound server will continue, using the null output device.

It was suggested to me on another forum that arts 1.3.2 was buggy and I should downgrade to 1.3.1. I wasn't exactly sure which package(s) to downgrade, so I tried downgrading libarts1 from 1.3.2 to 1.3.1, but this did not fix the original problem.

I've never had problems with sound before. Any further ideas on what could have
gone wrong, or how to troubleshoot this?

McCloud · 12-22-2004, 06:39 AM

One solution is to disable arts and just use ALSA (or OSS). I don't like arts at all. It has delay in my sound when watching movies. The only disadvantage of ALSA and OSS is that they don't support multiple audio streams (so you can't play to sounds at the same time, for example from MPlayer and XMMS, because 1 application will take control over the soundcard).

driptray · 12-22-2004, 06:49 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by McCloud
One solution is to disable arts and just use ALSA (or OSS)...

I've become quite KDE-centric, and use things like kalarm, and system notifications for apps like kmail. I also use juk for music (and can't get it to work with gstreamer).

So unless I can do all that with ALSA or OSS, I'm stuck with arts until it gets replaced (as I hear it will be).

Moloko · 12-22-2004, 03:31 PM

Did you check the existance of /dev/dsp or it's permissions?

With Alsa you can play mp3's and wav's at the same time through software mixing with dmix. It's not easy, but doable. KDE has both ogg and wav versions of it's sounds, so use the wav's and you'll be fine (when using aplay as the external sound application).

driptray · 12-26-2004, 07:16 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Moloko
Did you check the existance of /dev/dsp or it's permissions?

/dev/dsp exists, and is owned by

user:root
group:audio

I am in the audio group, and I have the same problem whether logging in as myself or as root.

I'm going crazy here without sound as my PC is my only source of music, and my main source of movies/TV.

The problem began immediately after a big apt-get upgrade. Is there a way to safely downgrade back to where I was before?