Sound that works...
In KDE desktop mp3, dvd, manual play of wav sounds, TV & fm radio etc sounds work ok.
In Gnome desktop notification sounds worked ok once I turned on the "Gnome Sound Server"

Sound that does NOT work...
Notification sounds in KDE.

I did a little Googling and discovered that KDE has their own sound server? then I read a few things about "arts" http://www.kde.org/areas/multimedia/arts-faq.php and kaudioserver. Seems like its an ongoing issue at KDE also http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde&w=2&r=1&...tification&q=b These are of no use at this point.

System sound is ON in the kcontrol panel so my only conclusion is that it has got to do something with a daemon / service that is not initiated.

Here's my question, If KDE requires their own Sound Server, Where is it and in what manner is it auto initiated?

If the problem lies elsewhere then I'd like to know that to.



PS: I find system sounds annoying and not knowing why I don't have sytem sounds even more annoying.

I know this may sound lame, but have you gone to Sound & Multimedia -> System Notifications, selected the KDE System Notifications and enabled the appropriate sounds for events in the control centre?
Don't flame me for stating the obvious. Just checking.

Been there, done that.
Works in gnome dt not kde dt (desktop). I will say this much, whenever I go into gnome and enable the Sound Server, then go in under kde, I get Notification Sounds, but only for the time being. If I reboot and go in under kde it's gone again.

I issue the "artsd" and a get pop-pop from my speakers but no sound.

As I stated before all other sound works ok...mp3,tv,radio manual play of wav via kaboodle etc.

go figure.

thanks for the obvious anyway.

Not sure if you found the source of your trouble yet.... But I think my problem was similar. I found there to be a file called ~/.kde/share/config/kaccessrc that gets created at sometime with bogus information. I deleted that file and my system notifications are back.