Hello all,

I'm having some trouble with phonon not being able to access my soundcard (a Creative Soundblaster Live 5.1) in later builds of KDE4. I'm not using it on a daily basis, but it still bugs me.

In the sound module of systemsettings, all outputs directly relating to my soundcard are greyed out, like this.
It still worked in some of the earlier alpha-builds, but since KDE4 came into beta status, this wouldn't work for me anymore (I'm currently using 4.0.3).
I can get sound if I'm running pulseaudio, so KDE will automatically use ESD output, but the sound is _really_ choppy and more a nuisance than anything else.

Also, I have tried running systemsettings as root, and as root it seems to work properly, but that is a no-go.
So it seems to be a problem with access rights (which is somewhat strange, since all other applications work just fine), but since I am unfamiliar with the way phonon accesses the hardware, I'm at a loss here.

Thanks in advance for any ideas you might have.

Try moving Esound to the top

That doesn't really change anything, and it would be even stranger if it did, I guess.

However, I found out that when manually restarting alsa when KDE is running leads to the discovery of a new output device (ADC Capture/Standard PCM Playback), with SB Live Multichannel Playback and Capture disappearing from the list. Setting this to highest priority leads to KDE playing _some_ sounds, seemingly per chance. Sometimes sound gets played, sometimes not, which is even stranger.

Also, this is only temporary, upon logging out and back in, I'd have to restart alsa again to get at least some sound out of it.

So basically, this is not really an improvement.
Any ideas or suggestions where to look for some clues are appreciated.

If you're using openSUSE 10.3, the problem might be with permissions.
Try making your users members of the "audio" group.
This is just a guess. I never had this problem.

Uh, that was exactly it. I thought there were some troubles with permissions, but I would not have thought of that.
Thanks a lot, although by the time I'll use KDE4 more often I'll probably switch off most sounds anyway.

Still seems somewhat strange, since this occured only with phonon. But it works, so whatever. Thanks again.