KDE 3.2 sound problems (RANT)

[TallGuy]

OK guys I've reported this for more than 3 days now in the KDE forum and no one has come forward with a meaningful reply:

I've D/L KDE 3.2 now that's stable ( supposedly ). Well guess what? There's a MAJOR design flaw IMHO here. KDE takes ot upon itself to TOTALLY control the sound output. This means that if you fire up XMMS , Xine , Mplayer , younameit-app , you ain't able to change the sound volume through it - just through the main switch. It's actually portrayed as a feature. In the Control Center is says:

The KDE sound system takes exclusive control of your audio hardware , blocking programs that may wish to use it directly.
If the KDE sound system sits idle it can give up this exclusive control

Autosuspend if idle after ...seconds ( option)

Now if you don't select this and set it to 0 you won't get ANY sound from any app. Just the system notification sounds. And if you do then you have sound but only at the level set in KMix. And sound-intensive programs like Audacity present with quite annoying errors ALL THE TIME!!

WTF?? Even Micro$haft doesn't seek exclusive control over hardware like this!! I've seen questions on this already and rest assured they'll just keep piling in..

[mdwatts]

Since we are not the KDE developers and obviously this is a rant, moving to /dev/random.

[aNoob]

switch to gnome. Installed KDE last week and used it 2-3 times. When I'll re install my system know what to skip on the install :D

[hard candy]

Can you still disable aRts from starting?

[TallGuy]

I've tried killing aRts , rolling back to the older version , rolling back kde-multimedia-sound to the 3.1 version. Nothing. Even killing aRts won't enable the applications access to the sound volume. It must be a library somewhere deeper than that.

[JohnT]

What distro are you using? Do you have Alsa installed?Another discussion..HERE (http://linuxquestions.org/questions/history/136038) With solutions for some.

[TallGuy]

I'm using SuSE 9 , have installed the latest arts and alsa(1.0,1-19) drivers. KDE is pre-compiled RPMs directly from kde.org
I've read through the other discussion and want to note that the sound quality per se is excellent BUT the damn volume knob only works through KMix even if I kill aRts or KMIx. I'm starting to think it's a Control Center thing. I'll try to D/L the source and compile it myself

[mdwatts]

Try the SuSE mailing lists as I see others have had sound related problems after upgrading to KDE 3.2.

http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/

[JohnT]

OK..I just downloaded and installed KDE 3.2 without the multimedia package and at the first boot there was a conflict between arts and alsa and arts segfaulted. I disabled arts and sound works fine. I can still use kmix. BTW this was downloaded and installed with swaret. There were some dependencies, but they were multimedia package related of which I didn't download anyway. I might later, after I research this some more.

[TallGuy]

John does the sound volume change from XMMS or do you have to change it from KMix? That's what's confusing me. I actually somehow managed at first log in to KDE to make somthing crash and after a deafening cracking sound ( I use headphones ) the volume was enabled through XMMS as well. Shame it didn't save as default..

[ghostwalker]

Go into Sound System -> Hardware and change quality from Default to 8 bits and then change Selected Audio Device to Threaded Open Sound System. This may help?

[TallGuy]

thanx for the effort but no cigar

[TallGuy]

Laugh it out but searching the kde-multimedia mailing list got me this admission of guilt
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-multimedia&m=106962227516066&w=2

>>Yes, for next KDE kmix will need pass to some changes. I agree about the
strangeness of this one, but at beginning, as Christian said, looks logical
and is this way Alsa are doing now. Put all switches/sliders together falls
in a huge horrible mixer as in the past.
Well, we will try do better next time :-)

--
Helio Castro
KDE Developer
Development Conectiva S.A.

[JohnT]

I've been using kmix...all controls in /usr/sbin/alsactl set to 100%. Have you used the alsa configuration? /usr/sbin/alsaconf.....arts is disabled. If none of these work...its card related. look to the alsa site for any special configs for your card.

[TallGuy]

alsaconf works but only for the given session. Any ideas on how to make it permanent? Once I log out and back in it's restored to it's old self , arts or no arts running :confused:

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by TallGuy
Laugh it out but searching the kde-multimedia mailing list got me this admission of guilt
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-multimedia&m=106962227516066&w=2

>>Yes, for next KDE kmix will need pass to some changes. I agree about the
strangeness of this one, but at beginning, as Christian said, looks logical
and is this way Alsa are doing now. Put all switches/sliders together falls
in a huge horrible mixer as in the past.
Well, we will try do better next time :-)

--
Helio Castro
KDE Developer
Development Conectiva S.A.

Reading all the problems related to the KDE 3.2 upgrade on the SuSE mailing list has put a hold on upgrading my SuSE 9.0. Besides the sound problems, it also breaks SuSE Plugger among others.

My advise to anyone considering a big upgrade such as KDE is to let others try it first and then review the bug reports at i.e. KDE and your distros knowledgebase and mailing lists. I always do that for X, KDE, new kernel etc.

At least if you decide to go ahead with the upgrade, you know what problems to expect.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by TallGuy
alsaconf works but only for the given session. Any ideas on how to make it permanent? Once I log out and back in it's restored to it's old self , arts or no arts running :confused:
Check to see that alsaconf is writing a configuration to /etc/modules.conf. Try setting read/write permission on /etc/modules.conf for all users before setting up.

[TallGuy]

Originally posted by mdwatts
Reading all the problems related to the KDE 3.2 upgrade on the SuSE mailing list has put a hold on upgrading my SuSE 9.0. Besides the sound problems, it also breaks SuSE Plugger among others.

My advise to anyone considering a big upgrade such as KDE is to let others try it first and then review the bug reports at i.e. KDE and your distros knowledgebase and mailing lists. I always do that for X, KDE, new kernel etc.

At least if you decide to go ahead with the upgrade, you know what problems to expect.

Ah but that's half the fun out of it. :D
Seriously I think KDE 3.2 is pretty good save for this unforunate change in the sound department which works for some but is clearly broken for most at various points. I've looked throgh something like 500 posts in the kde-multimedia and the SuSe mailing lists ( I kid you not ) and it looks like 10 different problems.. Will nail this one though. Just a matter of time before my head breaks down the wall LOL