I open files in XMMS off my hard drive and nothing will play. neither .wma or .mp3 files. my distro is SuSE 9.3

thanks

Do you use Alsa, Oss, Artsd? It is probably not XMMS, but the sound system you are trying to use. Also check the XMMS options > Audio i/o plugins.

what is Alsa, Oss, and Artsd?
Beep Media Player and AmoraK won't work either, so i don't htink it's XMMS either
applicatoins like GAIM will play sound tho
the Audio i/o plugins i have are:
>Bonk player .12
>CD Audio Player 1.2.10
>FM Radio player 1.5
>MikiMod Player 1.2.10
>ModPlug Player
>MXDRV Player 0.1.2
>NSF Player 0.0.3
>Ogg Vorbis Player 1.2.10
>Quicktime Player 0.1.0
>SAP Player 0.4
>Sega Genesis GYM Plugin 0.9.1
>SHN Player 2.4.0
>SPC Player 0.2.1
>Tone Generator 1.2.10
>Wave Player 1.2.10

I don't think that Xmms will play .wma files. That takes the win32 codec for that. Mplayer, Totem or Xine will play those if you have the win32 codecs installed
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/dload.html
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/info.html#docs

To play .mp3 Xmms will need lame installed. And I think the liblame Xmms plugin also.

Mplayer and Realplay will play .mp3 also.
https://player.helixcommunity.org/2004/downloads/

ALSA is the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, and is widely used software that many distros use to manage audio. Have you run alsaconf to see if ALSA detects your soundcard, and have you run alsamixer to adjust your volume levels? There's a good chance that some of the volume levels may be defaulted to mute. Additionally, each sound app has its own volume control, so if you're using XMMS (for example) be sure that XMMS's volume control is turned up sufficiently (XMMS uses a horizontal slider bar, which is below the text box that show's what's playing) -- J.W.

J.W. - XMMS won't allow me to add files into the the playlist window, so i don't think that it's a volume hting. Realplayer will play all my files, but only one at a time with no library or playlist sort of thing.
as for MPlayer, the installation guide link gave me a 404 Page Not Found error.
as for Helix Player, I installed it, but can't figure out how ot run it.

To get XMMS to play a file/directory, click on the upper left hand corner of the app window. -- J.W.

nothing will add that way.

Click on the upper left hand corner of XMMS, and a drop down menu will appear that will let you open a file, open a directory, open a location, etc. If you've got a bunch of mp3's in a directory called, say, /home/mp3 then select 'Open Directory', then navigate over to /home/mp3, then click OK -- J.W.

i know, i know, i've used Winamp on WinXP for ages. i do that and i click on the files and click 'add' and they don't add

garyozzy, your not asking the correct question...
people think that its just an issue with loading things into the playlist.

I just installed suse 9.3 and im having the same exact proplem with XMMS... it will not play anything...

but real player will...

If anyone has a solution to this issue, please advise.

thank you.

You don't have a plugin to play mp3 files (according to a list showed at the top). Try to play some WAV (or even better OGG) first. If it works try to search the web for MPEG something plugin for XMMS.

I had the same (kind of) problem in Fedora Core 4. I couldn't even play OGG files on default install. Here's what I found:

Make sure you have the updated libogg, libvorbis, and xmms (my versions are listed below)
look in /usr/lib/xmms/Input/ and make sure all the lib*.so are located there (you should see an MP3, OGG, Wav, etc)

I'm not sure if it is Fedora(redhat) specific but I have a librh_mp3.so which handles my MP3 playing. You also may need the associated lib*.la files copied to that /usr/lib/xmms/Input directory. I found xmms does not play OGG files unless libogg.a is located in the /usr/lib/xmms/Input directory (you can copy it here from /usr/lib)

here are my versions:
libogg-1.1.2-2
libvorbis-1.1.0-2
libvorbis-devel-1.1.0-2
xmms-1.2.10-16

A quick search on the web found that you probably need the mpg123 libraries instead for SuSE
usr/lib/xmms/Input/libmpg123.a
usr/lib/xmms/Input/libmpg123.la
usr/lib/xmms/Input/libmpg123.so

I just installed SuSE Linux 9.3 as well. You just need to install mpg321 from Yast. That will enable MP3 playback in xmms.

Indeed it's a library issue. With Suse 9.3, you don't get the libraries to play dvd's, mp3's, etc. for legal reasons. But as soon as you install, just use YaST (YOU) to update your multimedia libraries and you are set.