When I try to play a CD, no sound comes out
 

And it doesn't put out any sound when I use amoroK or KRecord either. I have Suse 10.1 for x86_64 and I'm using KDE. My system uses an AMD 64 dual core. When I log in it plays a brief piece of music, so I know the sound chip is working, (my sound controller is integrated). When I installed Linux it detected my "card". When I went into Settings>Sound&Multimedia>Sound System it didn't emit any sound when I pressed the "test" button. Here is what it says when I go into System>Monitor>Sound:

Sound Card
Sound Driver:3.8.1a-980706(ALSA v1.0.11rc3 emulation code)
Kernel: Linux linux-1mcj2.6.16.13-4-smp #1 SMP Wed May 3 04 53:23 UTC 2006 x86_64
Config Options:0

Installed Divers:
Type 10: ALSA emulation

Card cofig:
NVidia CK804 with ALC850 at 0xfe02d000, irq 50

Audio Devices:
0: NVidia CK804 (DUPLEX)

Synth devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Midi devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Timers:
31: system timer

Mixers:
0: Realtec ALC850 rev 0

If anybody could suggest something I could try I'd be grateful.

Thanks,

royeo

Run alsamixer (it's a console tool, but I don't know how something so complete is called in KDE). It will show you how many separate volume levels ALSA has. Make sure neither is muted or is below 50%.

Good idea, Raskin. I think KDE has a frontend called kmix.

--Dane

I know about kmix, but I don't know if it shows all ~20 output channels that are listed in alsamixer, or at least >10 channels that really have volume level on my notebook.

Is your user is a member of the cdrom group?

Make sure that your cd-rom drive has a cable to the soundcard. Most cd drives playing audio cds send the data directly to the soundcard using a small 3-wire, 4-pin cable.

No sound
 

How would I determine if my user is a member of the CDrom group? And if they aren't a member how would I make them one?

Thank you,

Roy O'Neill

man usermod (note: usermod requires root privileges)
cat /etc/group

You can also log in as the user that you want to play CDs and type, "groups". That will tell you which groups the user is in. If the user is not in the cdrom group, you can type (as root), "gpasswd -a username cdrom".

--Dane