I downloaded GStreamer and installed it. i then setup amarok for it, however when i try to play it i get the following error:

[GStreamer Error] Could not open resource for writing **esdsink.c(450)...

I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get it to work. I've tried downloading XMMS through YUM but whenever I do, I get an error

Right now I have 3 engines (not counting null) available for amarok: GStreamer, Helix (which gives me the error: No plugin found for the mp3 format), and aRts which doesn't give me an error and plays the song, but doesn't have any output.

thanks all

Try going to http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/178/42/ - I had a similar problem with my Suse10 installation and it was because the necessary codecs aren't installed from the CD distribution, and only come with the full (expensive) version. Hope this helps, though I'm not sure it will!
BTW - I had to skip a couple of the sites on the 'Adding sources to YaST' section as they didn't respond. The sites I added were packman.rsync.zmi.at/suse/10.0 and mirrors.kernel.org/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.0-OSS/inst-source.

The instructions for Fedora are here: http://www.fedorafaq.org/#mp3

The Suse instructions are different and won't help you if you use Fedora.

configure amarok>engine

Check a bit lower there's a menu for output, from your error message it looks like your esdsink output plugin (mine is called esdasink though) isn't working properly, try one of the others (mine works fine on ossink)

I did that. and now i get an error for one of them, and the other ones don't work when i configure amarok. that is my problem.

what i think im gonna do is uninstall amarok and start over. is ther anything special i have to do?