KMix causing high cpu usage, not responding

[molecule-eye]

I've never had any problems with KMix but lately KMix chokes when playing certain things such as mp3, videos, skype, etc. Sometimes it takes a few minutes from clicking the tray icon until the slider shows up and then cpu usage drops back to normal. But the whole time before it pops up, cpu usage is essentially maxed out. I think it's worse with more than one stream. I'm using Kubuntu 10.10 and KDE 4.6 RC2.

I've tried to removing the kmix configuration files in /.kde/share/config to no avail. In the meantime I've had to resort to keeping alsamixer open in the terminal to adjust volume. Not ideal!

[dibl]

Re: KMix causing high cpu usage, not responding

lately KMix chokes when playing certain things such as mp3, videos, skype, etc.

That's an odd statement -- kmix is not a media player, you know, it is a mixer to set the audio channels, volumes, etc. What are you playing the media with?

[molecule-eye]

Re: KMix causing high cpu usage, not responding

I meant "when I'm playing audio in audio player X (in this case Amarok), KMix chokes". What I meant seems quite obvious rather than odd, but one never can tell.

Anyway, the problem seems to have magically resolved itself. It took numerous boots and I suppose some updates, but something did the trick. Strange, but good.

[Guest]

Re: KMix causing high cpu usage, not responding

i am experiencing the same thing. it happens if i play music in amarok, if i start a windows game using wine, if i open a website which contains a flash object with sound in it, and many many other things, kmix goes nuts, and starts using maximum CPU, though it is not as horrible as OP posted, i can still right-click, and i can even open it and change things.
note: i don't ever touch kmix in the first place, my sound is adjusted to my liking already, and i use the speakers' volume wheel for raising and lowering volume, so as far as I'm concerned, kmix is just an accessory on my desktop, and now, it's a nuisance, how can i disable its loading on startup/login?

[Teunis]

Re: KMix causing high cpu usage, not responding

I had the same problem and it looks like I found a solution.
I renamed the ~/.kde/share/apps/kmix directory that holds the kmix configuration files.
So far all works again.

The problem was especially bad when I tried to change the volume using the volume soft-buttons on the keyboard.
But even after a reboot no new configuration files have been created as I have seen with other applications so I'll wait a little longer until I finally delete the original directory and it's files.

[Brianchse]

Re: KMix causing high cpu usage, not responding

Yep that did it, i was having the same problem and i did exactly what Teunis said, i went to ~/.kde/share/apps/kmix/ and renamed the Profiles directory to something different and it seems to have fixed the problem.
Thanks!!