Lenny: Rhythmbox, mp3, sound problems

[Len Berman <lenberman@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I am having problems with sound and the rhythmbox player.  Unfortunately, the problems are not completely repeatable.  The problem seems to have started when Lenny went stable and I switched from tracking Lenny to the stable. 

There are a bunch of problems.
 1) The rhythmbox GUI doesn't open unless it is started twice.  This happens every time.
 2) When I play an mp3, there is no sound.  The progress bar (usually) moves, but no sound.   Actually, sometimes things play, but this is rare, usually no sound.  Skype works.  Sometimes videos played through the browser have worked.  At this moment, gkrellm with xmmsd is working.  BTW, I tried an ogg file and that wouldn't play in rhythmbox either.
 3) If I have started and paused an attempted playback - so the rhythmbox GUI shows pause - and I cover the GUI and then try to redisplay, sometimes the GUI is frozen, i.e. the display does not refresh.  
 4) If I pause rhythmbox and try to start it again, it frequently crashes.

This seems like something involving threads - I do have a dual core CPU; however, I clearly have no idea what is happening or how to proceed.  Unfortunately, I really like the rhythmbox GUI.

I'm not sure what sort of debugging output to include.  I've included some things I've seen in previous sound related messages. 

Thanks for your time.

Len Berman


../home/berman: lsmod | grep snd
snd_hda_intel         325688  8 
snd_pcm_oss            32832  0 
snd_mixer_oss          12320  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                62596  4 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_dummy           2660  0 
snd_seq_oss            24992  0 
snd_seq_midi            5728  0 
snd_rawmidi            18528  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_midi_event      6432  2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq                41456  6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_timer              17800  4 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device          6380  5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
snd                    45604  21 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
soundcore               6368  1 snd
snd_page_alloc          7816  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
../home/berman:  cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [Intel          ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel
                      HDA Intel at 0xfdff8000 irq 16
../home/berman: