ALSA sound working, KDE sound not working [solved]

massysett · Last edited by massysett on Tue Jan 31, 2006 2:23 am; edited 1 time in total

I just installed a new Gentoo on my laptop. Before installing ALSA, I emerged many KDE packages and configured my X server. Everything KDE was emerged with the +alsa use flag.

Then I set up ALSA, which now works fine--I can play MP3s using madplay.

But there is no sound in KDE. I already checked the volume levels--they're not muted; even when I'm in KDE I can play MP3s in madplay in Konsole. But no KDE sounds are working. Of course I checked all the usual settings in the KDE Kontrol Center.

What could be wrong here? Do I have to reemerge KDE with ALSA already installed?

Chevredansante · n00b Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 47 Location: lahsa

By default KDE system sounds (knotify) go through the KDE sound system: ARTS. You would have to have that system set up and working for the KDE system sounds (knotify) to work.

That said, ARTS doesn't work very well at all. Instead, you can configure your own player.

If you go into the KDE Config centre >> Multimedia >> System notifications (those might not be the exact titles; mine are in French), you'll see a button in the bottom-right which reads "Configure player" (or something similar. Click that and choose mplayer or something that will play sounds from the console nicely. If you have play installed, you could use that too.

I hope that make sense. Either way, you shouldn't have to recompile KDE.

massysett · Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:43 am Post subject:

Excellent suggestion; thanks! I emerged mplayer and used that as a sound player, and now I get all the KDE sounds. I also turned off arts; it was making my system really slow (I suppose because it wasn't working properly.) I won't have access to arts, but this is no great loss--my music player is amaroK, and it doesn't use arts anyway.

massysett · Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2006 2:23 am Post subject:

Okay, I finally got arts working. Turns out I needed dbus started, which not only made arts work, but also dramatically sped up everything in KDE. In addition, I had emerged akode, though I don't know if this was necessary...