hello everybody,
recently I have upgraded my debian (woody) to sarge (testing).
I upgraded the kernel from 2.4 to 2.4. As well as from KDE 3.1
to KDE 3.2.
The problems is that while playing any musci using xmms for example
the sounds stops for a few seconds and then resumes upon opening
of any program or while browsing the internet.Even scrolling down a page
causes it to hang for 1 sec or so.
I really cant figure out the source of the problem since I upgraded alot
of stuff and the same time (Kernel, dist, and KDE).

Any help would really b appreciated !!!

Try in the KDE Control Center -> Sound & Multimedia -> Sound system and check the use real time priority and see if that helps. You may want to check and make sure DMA is enabled on the HD as well install hdparm and then hdparm /dev/hd? as root to check the settings on the drive.

What sound system are you using (OSS, ALSA), and what specific kernel versions. This could be as simple as a missed module, or much more compilated. KDE uses aRTs. You need to make sure that arts is configured to use the proper sound daemon, and you also need to make sure that there is not another program blocking sound. (Xmms should be using arts output)

I am using kernel 2.6 and KDE 3.2. I am using OSS.
The xmms is configured to use OSS.
I have as well the DMA turned on for my HD.I check
it using hdparm -d1 /dev/hda
As for the arts I didnt understand what u meant or how to do it?
I am quite new to linux

thanx 4 ur help

KDE uses a sound server, a daemon that runs in the background to prevent processes from fighting over the sound card. Usually it mixes the streams. Try running XMMS with the arts output plug in enabled.

I have xmms 1.2.9. I have checked the Audio I/O plugin tab in its preferences
and there is no such arts output plugin.I have only 4 plugins (esound,alsa,oss,diskwriter).
should I download it from somewhere?
The strange thing is that everything was just working fine be4 upgrading to KDE 3.2

thanx 4 ur help

I used apt-get install to install the xmms aRTS plugin and used it as
the o/p plugin but still the same problem. opening or loading any
program just messes up with the playing sound,it just hangs it 4 a few secs !!!
man even clicking some menu items or buttons causes the same problem.

Well, my first gripe is that you are using OSS with a 2.6.x kernel series. OSS is very depreciated in that series. So... any action essentially makes sound burp right? It sounds as if XMMS is being starved for CPU cycles. Have you tried any other music players (apt-get install rhythmbox for my favorite).

I have downloaded rythmbox and its working very well.no sound glitches. but
I must say that it sound quality is way down below that of xmms. there is even no
equalizer . but I still dont understand whats the problem with xmms.

thanx 4 ur help

Now that I see you are using a 2.6 kernel have you reniced X yet? You can edit the file /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config and change the -10 to 0 then restart the X server at the command line with /etc/init.d/kdm restart and can do the same in the menu option of the KDM login screen if you have uncommented the option for it in the /etc/kde3/kdm/kdmrc. What does the output of ps xa | grep arts look like could you post it here? You may also want to open a console window and run top to watch and see if any process is taking up a lot of the CPU when you are running xmms when the glitches happen.

Thanx HappyTux vry much for ur reply (as well 4 others).
reniceing X worked very well .there is no problems any more
with the sound from xmms.
But I would like if u could explain 2 me why this worked.
I know that nicing a job changes its priority but how did it
do the job in our case .

thanx 4 ur help,
this forum rocks

X was running at too high a priority so the graphics drawing that was going on had precedence in other words every thing else was getting slowed down by X taking the resources that should be available to them, good to hear you got it solved BTW.

Well thats new to me too!