Basic System Sounds but no CD Player
 

Hello,

I have installed Debian 3.1r0 and I get system sounds when I boot up, when I max or min a window and I can go to Control Center and play and hear any number of sound files such as system beeps and other small sounds. But I cannot get sound to come out of XMMS or other CD player either as root or as a normal login.

Do I have to put the users in the audio group to get sound?

Or is there something else that I am missing.

Thank you in advance
Philip

This is a common problem.

Many of the CD playing applications require that a physical audio cable is connected between the CD drive and your soundcard (it's a small coaxial cable, in addition to the power and IDE connections to the drive), so if you can, check this.

But I'm surprised about XMMS - I thought (though I may be wrong - I don't use XMMS) that the CD plugin for this extracted the audio over the IDE bus.

Anyway, it's probably worth checking -

1. Soundcard mixer levels, including any dedicated CD inputs and / or 'aux' inputs;
2. The settings for the application you use, specifically, make sure the app is looking for the correct CD drive for playback (/dev/cdrom usually).

As an aside, you can play back CDs using Xine, and I know that this definitely uses digital audio extraction over the IDE bus (so the audio cable isn't necessary).

There are a few threads on here regarding this problem, so have a hunt around if you need more info.

Good luck.

Thank you,

I really apreciate the help.

I thought I would install Gnome (it seems Xine works from there according to Synaptic) but I read something that indicated that there might be a problem running multiple desktops.

If the .desktop file is made by KDE, will installing Gnome or another window manager alter it or will they make their own such as .desktop.gnome?

Thanks again
Philip

Hello,

Xine will work just fine whatever Window Manager / Desktop Environment you use, so you shouldn't need to install all of Gnome. Basically, you just need xine-lib (or is it lib-xine?) and the Xine user interface (xine-ui). Easiest is to just select to install 'xine-ui' and apt should handle all the dependencies for you.

As regards running multiple Desktop Environments - it shouldn't be a problem. On the machine I'm using now, I've got both KDE and Gnome installed, and they get along just fine together. If KDE makes a .desktop file, Gnome won't alter it in any way, and vice versa. Menu structures are somewhat different, although work is afoot to bring KDE and Gnome closer together in this regard, so that adding a menu entry in Gnome will be reflected through to KDE and vice versa..

Gnome is well worth looking at if you feel inclined - I used to be a resolute supporter of KDE, but Gnome 2.10 is just so nice to work with that I tend to use it by default nowadays.

What you might have read about are situations where people sometimes install multiple distributions on one machine which share users' /home folders. I've done this myself, and the results can sometimes be unpredictable, because the various distros tend to set desktops up differently, not to mention the non-standardised allocation of user and group ID's between the different products.

I was having the same problem. Yes, you can play CDs through XMMS without an internal cd audio cable...

Just open XMMS, then open its menu, and go to:

options/preferences/audio I/O plugins

and select the 'CD Audio Player' plugin and click configure, and a box will open. Then under the 'Play Mode:' section click on 'digital audio extraction'.

Hello,

>>Xine will work just fine whatever Window Manager / Desktop Environment you use, so you shouldn't need to install all of Gnome. Basically, you just need xine-lib (or is it lib-xine?) and the Xine user interface (xine-ui). Easiest is to just select to install 'xine-ui' and apt should handle all the dependencies for you.<<

Thanks for the help, sorry about not responding before now.

Thanks again
Philip

Hello,

>>I was having the same problem. Yes, you can play CDs through XMMS without an internal cd audio cable...

Just open XMMS, then open its menu, and go to:

options/preferences/audio I/O plugins

and select the 'CD Audio Player' plugin and click configure, and a box will open. Then under the 'Play Mode:' section click on 'digital audio extraction'.<<

Thanks you, I will try it.

Sorry about the time between replies.

Thanks
Philip