how to fix pulseaudio?

[Guest]

My sound works in Gnome, and I wanted to try KDE, so I did sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop, and my wife is quite happy with the environment. However, sound is not working. Apparently a lot of people are having trouble with pulseaudio under KDE... how did this get out the door?

Anyway, the common solution is to purge pulseaudio, but the Gnome side still depends on it, and I'd like to be able to switch back and forth.

Audio still works when I use Gnome, but under KDE nothing happens. It sees the hardware, seems to pretend to be working, but nothing comes out. I've tried maxing out the volume, and using alsamixer to unmute things. The only clues to errors I see are when I use System Settings : Multimedia, and press "test" for my sound card (Intel ICH6), it says something to the effect of not working and falling back to PulseAudio. If I select PulseAudio and press test, nothing happens.

On /var/log/syslog, I see:
Apr 30 20:02:16 midnightsun pulseaudio[4799]: module-x11-xsmp.c: Failed to open connection to session manager: Could not open network socket
Apr 30 20:02:16 midnightsun pulseaudio[4799]: module.c: Failed to load module "module-x11-xsmp" (argument: ""): initialization failed.

Thoughts? Thanks!

[doctordruidphd]

Re: how to fix pulseaudio?

First question: Is pulseaudio running? Hit CTRL-ESC, and see if it shows up in the list.
If not, try starting it manually, by opening a konsole window and typing pulseaudio.
It might start, or maybe give some helpful error messages.
If it is running, you might also check KMix. Right click the speaker icon, click "show mixer window", then click the mixer button. Make sure the PCM item is listed (has the blue squiggly icon at the top). If not, you will have to add it from settings>configure channels. Then make sure it's not at zero volume.

[Guest]

Re: how to fix pulseaudio?

pulseaudio is running, with uid of logged-in user. The mixer shows PCM, which is un-muted and full volume...

[doctordruidphd]

Re: how to fix pulseaudio?

OK, the simple solutions didn't work. Check out the following guides:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...ght=pulseaudio

These guideas are primarily directed at the Gnome desktop (which you stated is working), but the info also applies to kde. The application used for setting up the pulseaudio server is padevchooser.
It puts an icon in your system tray; left click on it and choose "configure local sound server." You can also choose the "playback volume meter" to see if the pulseaudio server is actually doing anything when it tries to play.

You will also need to check your multimedia settings in SystemSettings>Multimedia
PulseAudio should be listed in the output devices box; if it is, you can test your settings (and the functionality of your other audio devices) with the test button.

[claydoh]

Re: how to fix pulseaudio?

note from the ubuntuforums post:

Note 4: Kubuntu users: Don't follow this guide - PulseAudio isn't used in your distribution

KDE does not use pulseaudio

For this reason, all that needs to be done is to move the pulsaudio entry in System Settings/multimedia/Device Preference/default to the bottom of the list.

I have heard this does work for those with sound problems and having both Kubuntu and Ubuntu installed. I tried installing pulseaudio by itself on my Kubuntu-only system but my sound works just fine.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: how to fix pulseaudio?

Hmmm. I have pulseaudio working just fine, but admittedly it took some tweaking.
I have several apps that do use pulseaudio, and at this point they all work. I have also heard that wine won't produce sound if pulseaudio is enabled, but it does on my system. I do have the alsa option listed above pulseaudio in multimedia; kde keeps giving me messages at startup that the alsa device is not working, but on test both devices work. Strange.

[Mercia]

Re: how to fix pulseaudio?

I too am unable to get sound (or webcam) working in Kubuntu 9.04. The menu paths are different for this version than for 8.04.

A.

[caveneo]

Re: how to fix pulseaudio?

Do we have an update on how to fix the sound problem on Kubuntu 9.04.
I have tried this one: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/simple-gui...ope-users.html but nothing happened.
I've loaded Synaptic Package manager and searched for Audigy and displayed 3 packages
ALSA emu10k1/2 patch-loader library
ALSA emu10k1/2 patch loader
ALSA emu10k1/2 patch-loader library development files
i installed them, restart and then OS informed me that a change in sound was made and now has a higher perfomance (something like this). But still i have no sound.
I wanted to get rid of Windows but as it seems, i will keep them until i fix the sound problem.

[abalone]

Re: how to fix pulseaudio?

How do I keep pulseaudio from starting without uninstalling it entirely? It's not getting in the way or anything, it just seems to be completely useless to me, at least now, and my experimentation with Pulse has yielded too many crashes and zombie pulseaudio processes and general confusion to let it run all the time for no reason.

(I tried to make it a JACK client because I'll always need JACK anyway and should JACK ever on some future soundcard insist to run "alone" on the hardware (you never know) so I thought I could use pulseaudio to let the usual rabble of amarok/dvds/wine/flash/games/chat run along with the audio production stuff... but pactl load-module module-jack-sink and pactl load-module module-jack-source don't seem to do what I was hoping... I get the "source" show up in JACK connections so I can redirect JACKified apps' audio to it (I'm not sure that's what I want, also I can't hear a thing anymore when I do that). I suppose I should ask that elsewhere)

[abalone]

Re: how to fix pulseaudio?

How do I keep pulseaudio from starting

It even starts every time I run aplay or start JACK or Exaile or Amarok. I don't want it to do that.

It also makes apps' volume controls (both on the apps and in pavucontrol) change the Master volume on the soundcard in abrupt, uenven and unpredictable-by-me ways but then there're many factors coming together (e.g. is kaffeine using software mixing and if not, which alsa mixer device, etc.)

[volkerbradley]

Re: how to fix pulseaudio?

This is how I enabled PulseAudio in KDE Jaunty. Perhaps it will work for you:
Refer to http://www.ubuntugeek.com/sound-solu...nty-users.html
sudo apt-get install padevchooser vlc-plugin-pulse xmms2-plugin-pulse libsdl1.2debian-all lib32asound2-plugins libao2 asoundconf-gtk audacious-plugins-extra gnome-alsamixer alsa-oss ubuntu-restricted-extras
Click on K -> Applications -> System -> User manager
Click on root and then click on the Groups tab and put check marks in front of:
pulse, pulse-access and pulse-rt
Then click on your user add the user to the same Groups
Click OK
Then reboot
Then give the following command:
pactl list
to find the names of the sound cards. The sound cards are called Sinks
For instance the name of my Plantronics headset USB headset is alsa_output.usb_device_47f_ca1_00500_0429034410003 _V060000A_if0_sound_card_0_alsa_playback_0
Then give the following command:
pacmd
you will come to a >> command prompt. Type:
set-default-sink alsa_output.usb_device_47f_ca1_00500_0429034410003 _V060000A_if0_sound_card_0_alsa_playback_0
or any other device that you choose.
This command is on one line with just one space between the word sink and alsa...
you can also set the input device with:
set-default-source alsa_input.usb_device_47f_ca1_00500_0429034410003_ V060000A_if0_sound_card_0_alsa_capture_0
then type quit
Hope that this works for you

[Nate]

Re: how to fix pulseaudio?

I completely uninstalled pulseaudio from my system. I have had no ill side effects from doing so. If it's causing trouble what's the point of keeping it? KDE can work just fine without it.