No sound in Amarok after recent update

[Laysan_A]

Hi,

Last night I did an update, and it installed the entire gnome desktop along with my regular updates! I certainly didn't ask for it! It did the same thing on my wifes kubuntu system last week (I don't update as often as I should ).

After the update (when I turned it on this morning) my sound didn't work at all. I discovered I had pulse running (my system has never liked pulse), but I didn't purge it, I just removed it. Then I checked the audio settings in system settings and they were the same as always. My first selection tested fine. I did get an error, initially, from kde that sound wasn't working, but after I got rid of pulse and rebooted the login sound was back. So far, so good. But I still wasn't getting sound from vlc or amarok.

I manually selected alsa for both the audio dropdowns in vlc (the "system default" settings didn't work) and saved and that did it for vlc, but the only settings in amarok are kde, and they remain the same (on the surface at least) as they always were. Audio works fine in firefox and the qmmp audio player, so I'm guessing there's a config entry somewhere for amarok trying to pipe the audio through pulse.

When I open amarok in the terminal I get an error message stating that my audio device (the working, preferred one) is not working. I also get a ibus error (QFileSystemWatcher: failed to add paths: /home/chris/.config/ibus/bus
Bus:pen: Can not get ibus-daemon's address.
IBusInputContext::createInputContext: no connection to ibus-daemon ) but that's another issue (I think).

I'm pretty sure there was an amarok update in that last one...but I'm not positive. My version is 2.4.0, and I'm using kde 4.4.5. I'm running lucid with backported 2.6.35-30 generic kernel, and I'm pretty sure (I should know, I know...) I've got backported alsa drivers, too, but I've forgotten how to check the version.

Any ideas?

[perspectoff]

Re: No sound in Amarok after recent update

Pulse can be wonderful or it can be a nightmare.

I happen to love Pulse because it does some things (multiple input source muxing, for example, and multiple output streaming) that are otherwise impossible.

Pulse Audio has a lot of quirks, though, and when it fouls up, it stays fouled up until you reinstall your OS.

In both my Lucid and Natty installations, Pulse can take control and never let go, no matter which settings are reverted (in System Settings -> Multimedia).

My main source of troubleshooting tends to be through PulseAudio Volume Control. If you don't have that module installed, you ought to do so.

Pulse Audio (sometimes for apparently random reasons) will mute an output channel (perhaps due to some configuration conflict). This becomes apparent in the PulseAudio Volume Control, where the output becomes "muted" and can be "unmuted" by clicking on the speaker icon that has a red X on it.

Usually once all your configurations are stable, the problem doesn't recur, but I have found that whenever I change programs, this occurs initially for some reason. Also note that many programs (Amarok is not one of them but VLC is) require special modules for output to Pulse, so make sure they aren't configured to use their Pulse modules. Nevertheless, when Pulse is installed, output may get funnelled through Pulse anyway (even if you have set the program to only use ALSA, for example).

I would never recommend using PulseAudio on any version of (K)Ubuntu prior to Lucid -- it was very unstable in earlier incarnations.

[Laysan_A]

Re: No sound in Amarok after recent update

Hi perspectoff,

Thanks for replying. To be honest, I'm content to just stay clear of pulse. I'm pretty happy with alsa (more or less).

(I just want stuff to work...) :P