Sound problems

[Ice-9]

Yesterday I was messing around in some sound control panels, you know just to know where every option is and what it does.
I have been careful not to save any changes though.
Nevertheless, when I try to play an mp3 with XMMS now, it tells me that antoher program is blocking my soundcard, or that my plugins aren't configured right.
I know I didn't even go into XMMS's preferences, and didn't change my output plugin, so it has to be something I accidentally did in my sound panel.
Also, when I log in as root I have no sound problems at all.
Tried to reboot a couple of times also, doesn't work.

Can anyone tell me how I could find out which program is blocking my card and how to keep it from loading at startup?

Thanks a lot.

[choasforages]

what gui were you useing. kde most often uses a sound server called arts. the way to kill the sound server would be to type in

killall artsd
or go download the xmms-arts plugin.
if that doesn't work repost

[Pantso]

I think that the ARtS sound server is causing you trouble.. Just kill it, as choasforages said and see what happens.

[Ice-9]

Nope, didn't work, when I type killall Artsd in a shell it tells me "no process killed".
Remember I'm a real n00b   , maybe Im doing something wrong, I just don't know what.
 

[Ice-9]

Ok, I got it to work, apparently I typed it wrong in the shell   :confused:  
I messed around in the sound control panel a little more and I saw I could disable aRtsd at KDE startup, I disabled it and now I can listen to mp3's again.

But I'm quite confused now, if the sound server is enabled by default, doesn't KDE need it for some things to run properly?
Can I leave it disabled?

Thanks.

[choasforages]

it needs it for all the whiz bang gui sound effects that it uses. actually you might find this of much use

xmms arts plugin
download the .rpmm file
just install that by typing in as root


rpm -Uvh xmmsarts-0.4-1.i586.rpm

then shutdown xmms if you are using it, then restart xmms. click the square at the top-left then options > preferences. there should be an little things with output plugin. click on the thingy/*i don't know how to explain it*/ and chang it to xmms-arts. also enable arts in kde and restart kde. the after kde restarts try and play an mp3. it should work and youll also get to hear all teh kde sound effect and such

[Ice-9]

Thanks a lot man.
But hey, I'm beginning to wonder if Linux isn't as jumpy as Windows sometimes    
I downloaded the plugin, but before installing it I decided to try and restarting the arts server and try XMMS ..... and it worked again!?!?
But hey, at least I have the plugin now so next time arts is f**cked I'll be installing it.

[voidmain]

If you will notice in your KDE aRts configuration you will see some time settings.  What this does is after "x" time of not being used by KDE it will go into sleep mode and give up it's lock on the sound device allowing non-arts apps to use the sound card.  When KDE tries to use the sound card again it will wake arts up.  So while arts is active no other non-arts sound app can use the sound device.  It was probably in the "sleep" state when your XMMS did work.  It might be better to install the arts version of XMMS so they both can use the sound card at the same time.

[Ice-9]

Ok, thanks for the info.
I installed the plugin, restarted Xmms (even KDE) but the plugin doesn't show up.
Only output plugins I have are : Alsa, OSS and eSound, and Diskwriter but this one is irrelevant here).
Currently I'm using the Alsa output plugin.
Did you say "Weird"?
 

[MikeU]

If something is blocking your sound card check what program is using it.

fstat | grep dsp

should do it...

I had the same problem, which was user incompetence. I'm not sure what sound card you have, but most sound cards have multiple channels. If one channel is blocked, simply use another one.

I'm not sure how they're used in Linux, but I'm assuming they use the dsp name as well. Check for how many dsp devices you have.

cd /dev
ls | grep dsp

My room mate said they're labeld dsp0, dsp1, dsp2, dsp3... etc in Linux. But, I use FreeBSD and they're labeled dsp0.0, dsp0.1, dsp0.2, etc etc.

With XMMS, I use the OSS driver, and configure it to use /dev/dsp0.3

Just do the same with Linux, check how many dsp devices you have, and just dedicate one to XMMS.

XMMS is the only program I have that is configured to use that channel, so I no longer get that device busy error message.

I hope that helped,

Mike U