I just ran alsaconf and it detected my card said it configured it. I also ran alsamix and readjusted the volume levels. Still not getting any sound.

I am going to consider rebuilding the system this time using the mplayer's official website for the audio drivers. and see what I can learn from the README.

Thanks for your help Keith.

You didn't address anything I said in #28. You might want to have another look at that.

I'd look at that first. If audio doesn't work at all (I like `aplay /dev/urandom` to test sound...Ctrl+C to kill it, and trust me you will want to kill it quickly if it works), then rebuilding mplayer isn't going to help. First make sure your user is part of the audio group. Beyond that it would be nice to get the output of `lspci -vv` as root and `aplay -l`.

Of course, if sound works everywhere else and not just mplayer, then you can go ahead and continue screwing around with mplayer sources...

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I just checked my machine and I am a member of the audio group. And I didn't have to enter it manually, unlike previous versions of Slackware.

If you run the `adduser` script instead of manually settings things with `useradd`, it prompts you to add the user to the groups that you like. In this prompt, it suggests pressing the up arrow to select default groups. You are not added to any groups automatically (except perhaps users), but if you follow that prompt logically instead of blindly pressing enter then you will be added to the suggested groups (audio cdrom floppy plugdev video power netdev).

It is entirely possible (and I have seen it many times) that the OP did not add his user to the required groups and therefore has no access to /dev/snd/* or /dev/dsp, for example, whose permissions are root:audio.

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Siawash, you've recently expressed interest in installing GNOME. If you're actually running GNOME, then you needed to mention that because GNOME uses a sound daemon by default.

Also, will tell you if there's a program blocking the OSS sound device (the first one that MPlayer tried and failed to open). It's one thing I would try.

EDIT: changed post to be less confrontational. I now realize that the original version of the post wasn't justified.

Guys thanks for all the contributions. The last rebuild I used kde to add user instead useradd from the terminal.

I just added audio,video, floppy, cdrom,plugdev,disk to my user and now I have sound. Yeppeee...!

I am going to have to wait a day to try out MPlayer as I am going to be away from my machine. I will let you all know as soon I get back to it.

Once again many thanks.!

Siawash,
Glad you finally got sound working ok.
For MPlayer, after you get MPlayer installed, in order to be sure that MPlayer uses alsa instead of OSS, just add this to your ~/.mplayer/config file:
Then restart MPLayer. You can confirm that MPlayer is indeed using alsa just by playing a music or audio file using MPlayer from the terminal.

I probably did add the audio group when I ran adduser, totally subconsiously. It's one of those things I do out of habit and didn't even realize I was doing it at the time.

Hurray! Good work, siawash.

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I would't have been able to do it without you guys. Many thanks!

Just one thing, I am noticing MPlayer takes a long time to cache streams, before it starts outputting audio. Is it a question of increasing cache size?

If you *increase* the cache size it will take *longer* to play audio but you will get very few (if any) buffering moments (so the stream will play perfectly). You could *reduce* the cache size if it really is taking too long to play a stream, but you may suffer stuttering audio or buffering delays. See /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf for the current settings, which can be modified there, in ~/.mplayer/config, or passed as command-line options. You would want to play with -cache-min, I believe, which allows you to leave the cache alone but start playing earlier.

I will look into this when I get the chance. I just remember realplayer was much quicker with very occassional jitter.

Another thing i notice is when watching flash movies the max volume level is only moderate when compared to what it can be. alsamixer shows all levels in the red.

When listening to local audio files the volume level can be brought up much louder.

Some movies are just quiet. Try passing the -softvol-max option to mplayer (see `man mplayer`) to set a maximum software amplification if your hardware will not amplify adequately.