KDE kills sound

[mounty1]

MSI S270 laptop with i686 architecture build.

After booting, it is possible to play a sound with mpg123. However, if a KDE session be started while the sound be playing, the sound stops just as the session initialisation is complete, i.e., when kdm be loaded, desktop restored etc.

• This happened before artsd was installed, and after.
• After artsd was installed, it happens whether or not sound be enabled in the kontrol centre.
• Once a kde session has been run, sound is dead until the machine is rebooted; even the drastic /etc/init.d/modules restart will not restore it.
• K info centre says that no sound cards are detected.

I won't bore people with lots of low-level stuff (lspci output etc.) since this is clearly a kde matter --- sound is working correctly outside kde.

Why does kde kill sound ?
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Michael Mounteney

[didymos]

Well, the KDE sound system is starting with KDE, and you have something using the card while it's trying to do that. Try not playing an mp3 while KDE starts.
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Thomas S. Howard

[mounty1]

If no sound be playing when KDE starts up, KDE will not do any sound. My experiment with mpg123 was to obtain more information about what KDE is doing on start-up.

I have never been able to make KDE play anything on this machine.
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Michael Mounteney

[bunder]

how is your arts set up? are you using an external player? which player? which sound formats are you using for your sound themes?

i run everything that's possible through arts. no external player, and have ogg and wav sounds in my theme. ymmv, not quite sure if its mpg123/321 doing it to you, you might want to try /bin/aplay.

cheers
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[mounty1]

Could you clarify what you mean by `how is my arts set up ?' ? Under the kontrol centre, Sound & Multimedia, Sound System, `Enable the sound system' is checked and `Select the audio device' is auto-detect. All other options on the Sound System panel are blank/default.

But the problem was the same before artsd was installed, and it is the same if `Enable the sound system' be unchecked.

Is it not significant that KinfoCentre / Sound says `No information available about Soundcard' ?
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Michael Mounteney

[bunder]

[mounty1]

OK, tried that, nothing. I've never seen that plug:dmix thing before so I couldn't investigate/play any further with the idea.
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Michael Mounteney

[bunder]

[mounty1]

It doesn't. I couldn't see anything there that was relevant to the problem.

If the machine be rebooted, mpg123 -a plug:dmix works. If the KDE session be started while mpg123 plays, sound is still cut-out as the KDE initialisation is completed, even though plug:dmix is set as the KDE sound device.

Surely something is happening at a much lower level ? KDE is set to share the sound now, through plug:dmix, but it still cuts it. And KinfoCentre still says no information about soundcard.

Also, on reboot, alsamixer reports that the output (master and PCM) have been muted, but that is probably the doing of Kmix; while KDE is running, alsamixer shows the outputs as not muted.

Once a KDE session has been run, sound will not work again until the machine be rebooted, even if the KDE session be quit. KDE is knobbling something.
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Michael Mounteney

[bunder]

what use flags are used by arts?
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[mounty1]

[bunder]

try adding vorbis and artswrappersuid. some kde sounds are .ogg files.
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[mounty1]

[bunder]

if you're not using dmix, arts will exclusively use your sound card... if arts goofs up, then it will essentially hang your whole sound system.
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[mounty1]

I am using plug.dmix, as both the Override device location specification within the KDE control centre, and as the -a option to mpg123 outside KDE (outside being before, during or after the KDE session).
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Michael Mounteney