I have an error that just about 4/5 of the time i open xmms i get this error
Couldn't open audio
please check that:
1. you have the correct output plugin selected
2. No other programs is blocking the soundcard
3. Your soundcard is configured properly


As far as i know my soundcard is configured properly and no other program is blocking the soundcard, is there any way to check or is just somthing tha ti have to deal with. If it is somthing i have todeal with are there any better MP3 players out there that are opensourse?
thanks,
mike

right click on the title bar on xmms and choose Options > Preferences. Click the Audio I/O Plugins tab (it may be the default view anyway). in the Output Plugin frame, click the combo box to see what output drivers you have. choose the correct output plugin. if you're using kde, use the arts driver. if using gnome, use either oss or alsa (if you have alsa installed). of course this assumes you have all the available xmms output drivers installed. you should if you're using xmms 1.2.7-X. the newer versions seem to have dropped arts, but you can still download the plugin seperately.

I had this problem also. I had to go into Options--- Prefrences---CD Audio Player and select the digital audio extraction. Seemed to work under root for me, but still having audio problems under a user

Speaking of XMMS, is there an Input plugin for MIDI?

This might not be a problem to you but was a problem to me in XMMS. I had to go into Options--Prefrencess--CD Audio Player and change the device name. When i first installed xmms it gave it the name /dev/cdrom... i had to change it to /dev/hdc

do it like this go to command line
root@localhost#ls -a
root@localhost#rm -rf .xmms/
then go to x window and run it again
if it doesn't work try out configuring your sound card.are you
using alsa!!

I had a similar problem at some point and I think it may have had to do with having both alsa installed as well as having the oss sound module compiled too. I could watch a DVD using alsa but when I wanted to listen to some music I had to switch to the oss module in preferences in xmms. Or it was something annoying like this. After I properly installed alsa using oss emulation and by not compiling an oss module when compiling the kernel, I was able to eliminate this annoyance.

I think that if you simply choose oss in the xmms preferences, you should be fine.

Of course, there is always the issue of permissions and whether or not your normal user has permission to be using the cdrom device (check under /dev) or whether or not the normal user can use /dev/dsp (i think). Anyway the good news is that if is is not a conflict between alsa and oss then it must be a permissions problem since you can use xmms as root. (Those who cannot use xmms as root probably have scsi emulation working in their kernel which means that the cdrom is not /dev/hd* but /dev/scd* blah blah blah)