Sound Problems

KDE 3.x uses the aRts sound system. This system has a number of benefits, but also seems to cause a lot of problems for users. Here are some tips which might help to solve your problem, or at least to localize it:

Check that sound is working independently of aRts: Make sure artsd isn't running (run 'killall artsd') and then run up xmms or some other program that isn't part of KDE. If that program doesn't play sound, then your general sound setup is probably broken and it's not a KDE problem.

Try playing sound with 'artsplay /path/to/some/soundfile' (this time with artsd running). Any error messages there might be useful in pointing you in the right direction.

If artsplay will play .wav files but not .mp3 and .ogg files, you might be having problems with akode.If you compiled KDE yourself, run 'make uninstall' in kdemultimedia/akode and then 'make install' in kdemultimedia/mpeglib_artsplug . If you are using KDE packages from your distribution, try asking them about the problem.

Try setting the aRts output method to 'oss'. In the Control Center, go to Sound & Multimedia->Sound System and then to the Hardware tab. Under 'Select the audio device', choose 'Open Sound System'. If you're running alsa, this will use the OSS emulation, which may give better results (or worse ones, YMMV).

Running 'artsd -l 0' (that's dash-ell-zero) will give a lot of debug output, some of which might help you to diagnose the problem.

If you don't want artsd to block your sound device, you can tell it to use the 'null' output device: In Control Center, go to Sound & Multimedia->Sound System and on the Hardware page, select the output device "No audio input/output". Note that this will prevent most KDE apps from playing sound at all, although no error messages will be shown.

To get System Event Application sounds going For Fedora 3 with all the latest patches as at 11th Feb 2005 try setting the exernal player to /usr/bin/artsplay using the "Player Settings" button onthe page Sound & Multimedia->Sound System-> System Notifications.

If you don't hear KDE notifications, you can try to change the internal player in Control Center->System Notifications->Reproducer Settings, check "external player" and type "artsplay" or "play"