No system sound in KDE 3.3.2
 

Hi,

I have no system sound in KDE 3.3.2, I have tried to play systemsounds in the controlcenter but = no sound at all.
My soundcard works though, I can e.g. listen to web-radio AND i can play systemsounds in alsaplayern

Any tips what I should check for, I am a bit lost here.

Some info:

- I am running 2.6.11, Debian Sarge

- xxxx 15249 7289 0 12:41 ? 00:00:12 /usr/bin/artsd -F 10 -S 4096 -s 40 -m artsmessage -c drkonqi -l 3 -f

- I did run 'gst-register-0.8' that fixed startup errors for some KDE-mixer-sw, but still no System-sound

- I have these errors in messages (whole bunch of them):
codec_semaphore: semaphore is not ready [0x1][0x700300]
codec_write 1: semaphore is not ready for register 0x54

Anyone?
- Johan

Have you activated the sound server? Which engine is it using?

artsd is activted if that is what you mean, please clarify what I should start to make it work, its not really that big deal but you know its annoying when something just doesnt work :-)

try this:

$su -
$alsamixer
Configure bars with arrows, enable or disable service with "m" key.
When done ESC
#alsactl store
P.S. If you have 5.1 speaker system, be sure that LFE channels bars are all way down and [off]. LFE channel is to generate 5.1 emulation matrix on 4 speaker systems.
;)

The sound server is artsd. In the control center, there should be an entry sound server. Go to advanced and check which engine it is using.

Suddenly it just works!
 

This is really strange, this morning when I fired up my computer, I had system sounds! And I cannot for my life remember that I have done something that I thought should help, yes I poked around a little bit in alsamixers, players, setting stuff to default and stuff. I think it was months since I heard a system sound on this box!
It bothers me that I do not know the solution.. to me it feels like system sounds is a little buggy in KDE, at least in 3.3.2.. I've seen people talk about it on the web..
Well, I got system sound now anyway
Thanks for all your help!
- Johan

This is what happened
 

Okey Im back! :-)

I think this is what happened (well something like this).
I changed this:

[esd]
auto_spawn=1 <----- I had a 0 here before
spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 2 -d default
spawn_wait_ms=100
# default options are used in spawned and non-spawned mode
default_options=

According to http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-26567.html (nice website BTW), this tells ESD not to run when one does not need it.
"ESD: Enlightened Sound Daemon
In theory, only one sound can be played, since there is only one loud speaker. In order to play many sounds, one uses a sound mixer. That's the role of ESD. Applications send their sounds to ESD, the latter mixes these sounds, sends the result to OSS, which transmits it to ALSA."

I think ESD for some reason locked the ability for arts (systemsound) to start up. Anyway when I rebooted the systemsound worked, however now I could not play music anymore! I got the following error in mplayer:

"[AO OSS] audio_setup: Can't open audio device /dev/dsp: Enhet eller resurs upptagen
[AO ESD] esd_open_sound failed: Förbindelse vägras
ao_nas: init(): Can't open nas audio server -> nosound
"
You have to look in a Swedish dictionary :-) Well I think you get the point as most of it is in english.

I turned off systemsound in Control Center and I could play music again!, I then tried to re-enable systemsound again while using mplayer, I then got the following error:

"Sound server informational message:
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device: default can't be opened for playback (Device or resource busy)
The sound server will continue, using the null output device."

Appearantly mplayer and arts (systemsound) use the same sounddevices, and this is not possible!?

What should I change in my setup to make both of them work at the same time, I mean it should be possible to listen to music and have system sounds at the same time? Right?

Glad that everything wrapped up nicely for you!
;)

Thanks SlackerLX, but what should I change in my setup to make both of them work at the same time, I mean it should be possible to listen to music and have system sounds at the same time? Right?

If using KDE. it's in KMix. Try to play with switches inside the program

Go to control center -> Sound System -> Hardware, and try selecting ESD as the audio device. That should make arts play sound through ESD, which would avoid the collision between them.

There is no option to select ESD iin Ctrl center-sound-hardware. Only autodetect,alsa,oss, no sound, Jack Audio Kit and Threaded Open Sound System. All my plsyers, media streams, dvd's etc all work with perfect sound, but KDE system sounds kaput. Issue happened after updating to 3.5 including alsa and art sound system upgrades, via official SUSE repositories. Something is definetely screwed up with artsd - anyway, I'll keep searching. Maybe corrupted files?