Re: sound issue

[Mark Grieveson <dg135@torfree.net>]

> I'm no sound guru, but there are a couple of things that may help you. 
> 1) both gnome and kde use different sound daemons and they're probably 
> conflicting with each other. There should be a way to set these things 
> to just use alsa. 2) your alsa setup may need to be setup for software 
> mixing. google "alsa dmixer" and you should get something to help you 
> there. probably what is happening is the gnome sound daemon is taking 
> over your soundcard and nothing else can get at it. I'm pretty sure 
> the gconf editor has a setting to use alsasink instead of esound. look 
> under g-streamer settings.  sorry its vague, but hth.
>
> A
>
>  
>
> I tried messing around with the Multimedia Systems Selector, in the 
> Gnome Control Centre.  To give myself different option from the 
> osssink it was set on, I installed various other gstreamer packages.  
> Alas, I now have no sound what-so-ever.  It seems to set up perfectly 
> via alsaconf, identifying my sound card (SoundBlaster Live), but, for 
> some reason, it sets up for a non-existent card instead:
>
> "4405 7839 (failed: processes still using sound devices: 
> 8064(gnome-settings-)).
> /etc/init.d/alsa: Warning: Processes using sound devices: 
> 8064(gnome-settings-).
> Unloading ALSA sound driver modules: snd-emu10k1 snd-rawmidi 
> snd-seq-device snd-ac97-codec snd-util-mem snd-hwdep snd-bt87x 
> snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm snd-timer snd-page-alloc (failed: modules still 
> loaded: snd-bt87x snd-pcm snd-timer snd-page-alloc).
> Building card database..."
>
> ALSA Mixer indicates it is set for a Brooktree bt878, instead of using 
> snd-emu10k1.  How do I fix this?


I did figure this out.  I had replaced libesd0 with libesd-alsa0, and 
this buggered things up.  Putting it back helped restore some sound.  
I'm still having the same sound problems I initially described, though 
(alsa not loading correctly on boot, and then, after running alsaconf, 
having sound from either gnome and general applications with no sound 
for kde applications, or having sound for kde and general applications, 
with no sound for gnome applications (and occasional errors like "dev 
not found, using null output device instead").  While I can live with 
this, it is an irritant.  I'm hoping the day will come when there's ONE 
package, called "sound", that I can chose, and then have sound work on 
all the packages, and not just a select few (hmm, yes, I realize this is 
just some deluded idealist fantasy, like "world peace", "end of 
starvation", etc, but it is good to dream sometimes).