sound works for desktop but not other apps

hi folks. i have been looking on these forums for days now for a solution and have not found anything that fits what i need. i have a soundblaster 16 pci card which IS detected on redhat 9 and the correct drivers are obviously loaded for it then. there is sound for the desktop but nothing else. i have run sndconfig and aumixer and didn't have any probs. i can set up sound for desktop events just fine. but that's it. no other app has sound.

if this has been coverd (which i suspect but haven't been able to find as of yet) then plz post the link.

i would greatly appreciate any thoughts on the matter. just one thing. if u would have me try anything i need the specific commands (very sorry but i am very new to linux.....as of last friday).

thanks in advance all.

Hi.

You'll probably have to kill artsd or maybe esd.

Go into the 'Start' style menu -> System Tools -> System Monitor.
In the Process Listing tab, look for processes called artsd or esd. If they're there, right click on each and select kill from the menu.

Your apps should be able to access your sound card now.

Dave

P.S. That might not be the problem, but since you can get sound from your desktop, I think it probably is.

Dave you are AWESOME! TY man! that was it. i have been fighting with this since friday !!

now i haven't rebooted yet to see if this is permanent but i will here shortly. i am in the middle of installing alsa at the moment (but i think i will stop after the drivers are done and not finish the utils and lib for now)

if by some chance there is no sound when i reboot is it possible to permanently disable that esd process instead of doing it manually?

in any event at least i can function now...whoo hoo!!!

thanx again!

Hi again.

Glad it's working! I'm guessing you're using KDE. If so, you might want to go into
ControlCentre -> Sound & Multimedia -> Sound System -> aRTs tab -> deselect 'start arts soundserver...........'

That will stop arts from starting when KDE starts, but if you start a KDE application like kaboodle or noatun, then the artsd will start again, and you'll have to kill it to get other (non-kde) apps to access the sound card.

You could also try removing execute permission from the artsd executable, but that may leave apps that need it unusable (they may refuse to start).

Dave

P.S. You mention esd particularly, so you may be using Gnome. I've never had any issues to speak of with esd (Gnome's sound server) - it's always beed artsd that's messed with me, however I would say it may be prone to the same sorts of problems. You might want to have a look around Gnome's settings to see if you can stop esd from starting. That said, I've got esd running right now and I'm listening to mp3s on MPlayer (which is set up to use oss), so I doubt esd is actually the problem

you guessed it. i am using gnome. unfortunately, after rebooting i lost it. i was able to find the menu to disable artesd but i forget how. now i am back to square 2*

because i at least finished installing alsa drivers & etc b4 rebooting. so now i wonder if its possible to use alsamixer to fix the prob... any thoughts?

now i seem to have lost the driver altogether.... now the sound detection doesnt work... its the same driver as b4 but just doesnt work. i am wondering if the alsa did this one,

again thanx for all the help dave.

Most programs use oss to access the sound card. This means they send the audio stream to /dev/dsp. The trouble with this is that only one program can access /dev/dsp at one time. artsd is basically a mixer which allows any programs that can use it to mix sounds, so that they can all produce sound at the same time. This has problems, because artsd takes over /dev/dsp, and any programs that can't use artsd can't then use dsp.

ALSA has an oss compatibility layer which takes input from /dev/dsp and routes it through ALSA, so it may be possible that using ALSA may solve your problems (it depends on whether /dev/dsp can ba accessed my multiple programs when ALSA's in use). I doubt it though. It *may* also be possible to create multiple /dev/dspx, and route sound through each into ALSA. I really don't know.

ALSA also uses different drivers for sound cards than the old OSS, so you'll have to configure for your sound card for ALSA.

Some programs are able to use ALSA directly, and don't suffer from these sorts of problems. I can't think of any off hand, though

Dave

P.S. I'm by no means an expert on all of this - my knowledge has been aquired by compiling kernels and running into the same sorts of problems you have.

ok. i understand what you are saying but i dont have the means yet to get it done. i will take a look at alsa's website to see if i can get this done. the odd little prob now is that i seem to have to open the gui mixer and simply adjust the volume slightly and then open the sound detection and run it twice in order to get sound after i reboot. i seem to recall someone on this forum stating something similar so i will look that up.

you mentioned it before i did... i've now noticed that i don't have sound but for one app at a time. i also noticed that the driver being used for the card is an ensoniq. it works but i found under mdk (before i scraped it and installed rh9) that snd-16 worked better and allowed for the multiple apps. i haven't seen a gui option to change this driver like mdk has but that's ok. i would be glad to set this up manually if i knew how (specific directions anyone?).

one last thing..... this may all be time consuming and a bit frustrating at times but i have to admit... i like linux so far. i was able to play one of my fav games last night eith a buddy online. the best part is that his winblows box crashed a few times (the game is very resource intensive) but my awesome little linux system not only didn't crash, but had the best performance i've ever had. .....it's the little things.....

Hi! I also have a Sound Blaster 16 PCI. I'll download a music player to see if my distribution of Linux recognizes it. I am using Amigo Linux based on Slackware 9.1. My Windows manager is Window Maker. I'm going to look for an MP3 and Vorbis OGG player now.

Can someone recommend a music player that plays waves, MP3s and Vorbis OGG? Thanks!

I don't know if I need to install any drivers or edit a configuration file. I just installed Linux on my Windows 98 computer on Saturday.

I'll let you know if I have any problems playing music.

Hi

'xmms' is a good bet. It's probably already installed.

Dave

I think SlackWare 9.1 recognizes my SB 16 PCI. Here is what I see:


Nov 10 01:12:42 Amigo kernel: es1371: version v0.32 time 15:29:01 Feb 28 2004
Nov 10 01:12:42 Amigo kernel: PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:0f.0
Nov 10 01:12:42 Amigo kernel: es1371: found chip, vendor id 0x1274 device id 0x5880 revision 0x02
Nov 10 01:12:42 Amigo kernel: es1371: found es1371 rev 2 at io 0xe000 irq 10
Nov 10 01:12:42 Amigo kernel: es1371: features: joystick 0x0
Nov 10 01:12:42 Amigo kernel: ac97_codec: AC97 codec, id: TRA35 (TriTech TR A5)

Update: I uncommented the wrong line in "/etc/rc.d/rc.modules" Opps! Linux was looking for an ISA SoundBlaster 16 instead of a PCI / es1371 card.


I see my soundcard and AC97 when I type /sbin/lsmod.

Update 2:
I don't see a file called lspci in "/sbin"

When I type "cat /dev/sndstat," I see this message:
"No such device"

When I type dmesg, I don't see a message saying "Sound initialization started"

Maybe I should install an Alsa driver? I would download RedHat's isapnp tools, but I can't find them. I could install a DOS driver too.

Or may I should modify the line
"/sbin/mprobe es1371" in "/ect/rc.d/r.modules"?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.