I found this laptop will player sound fine thru the USB port. However Mplayer that I just installed is using the speaker output which I can't hear. So does anyone know how to configure Mplayer to use the USB port? I think its the /.mplayer/gui.conf file that will have the sound config.

You should be able to go to the options screen, pick the correct driver (alsa or oss) click on 'configure driver' and point it at the right output device.

I seen the drivers to select and only two of the 7 or so work, alsa and esd. but once I reboot I have no sound and get an error saying can not initialize , no sound. I think I have to run alsaconf again.
the usb volume is loud, no control to turn it down, but thats ok. I haven't found any info on configing USB sound under alsa.
Im also trying to get Ekiga voip to work and of course the usb sound isn't working with it either.
the usb audio works with movie player, AARRRGG!

edit... I think Ekiga is a money related issue not USB. I read that if buy a subscription it works just fine!!! AMAROK works fine with usb too, just something not configured with mplayer. i can set the mplayer equalizer controls up high but the sound distorts but I can hear it, AARG

mplayer has a volume control too, but it's not easy to see depending on which gui skin you use. you should probably set mplayer's volume at around 70-80% or whatever works best for your setup without distorting. After that you can control the volume on your stereo.

I would rather it worked with the USB headphones than the speaker. I'm sure somewhere in a, config file there is a missing option to enable USB sound. I haven't been able to find it. I was hoping someone else is using Mplayer with USB sound that could tell me yes it worksor post the audio section of the config so I can see it.
Oh well.... thanks

spam removed

ummmm? ummm, well thats cool, will Merconnect.com let me use my USB port to hear Mplayer around the house? My guess is... probably not.

Sometimes what happens is your internal soundcard grabs the signal and your USB driver doesn't get a chance. If you are using hotplug try to blacklist your internal soundcard. I didn't remember this until now but I also had problems getting USB to work until I disabled the internal card.

It seems that its just the Mplayer other things work, I think even the Ekiga VIOP work even though it says it doesn't! I have looked in all kinds of config type files looking for something to turn on or off.
So how and where do I turn off this internal sound card at?
Thanks Randux for replying!!

You have to disable the driver. I don't know how to do it in Mandriva. In Slackware there is a blacklist file which has a bunch of commented entries for various drivers. You have to figure out which driver you have for your onboard soundcard and uncomment it (blacklist it) so that it doesn't get loaded by the kernel. If it does get loaded the USB driver doesn't ever get a chance to work.

You can look in your system log (messages or syslog or dmesg) to see which driver(s) are getting loaded for your infernal soundcard.

Look for blacklist maybe in the modprobe.d directory if you have one.

If you can't go any further you should ask your question on distro specific forums.

Ok, I finally got it. I have ALSA driver installed. But under Mplayer options I had to select OSS driver and then randomly select different options and stumbled accross one that worked. I don't really understand how that worked but it did and thats ok! I spent many hours fooling around with this. Now if I can only get DVD's to play...