[vox-tech] Intermittent Sound Issues under Fedora Core 2

Jonathan Stickel jjstickel at sbcglobal.net
Tue Feb 15 20:21:31 PST 2005


While Linux can produce quality sound fairly easily, applications that 
run on Linux do not like to share the sound.  Your type of problem is 
quite common and drove me crazy for a long time.  I suspect that "arts" 
(KDE's sound server) is competing with XMMS for the use of ALSA (actual 
hardware sound driver).  You probably want to enable the "dmix" plugin 
for ALSA:

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=DmixPlugin

This may not immediately solve your sound problem, but it is a step in 
the right direction.  I've found it necessary to configure "esound" 
(another sound server) to use dmix, and then I use the esound plugin in 
XMMS.

The only problem with sound mixing that I have now is 
Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird hanging sound once in awhile.  They also use 
esound, BTW

HTH,
Jonathan


Marc Elliot Hall wrote:
> This issue falls under the "annoying quirks" category rather than
> "mission critical failure"...
> 
> My desktop system at work is Fedora Core 2 with a 2.6.5-1.358 stock 
> kernel, running KDE 3.2. Most of the time, it works great. I do my 
> development work with xmms running so I can listen to music on my 
> headphones and tune out the ambient noise in the office. 
> 
> However, at seemingly random intervals, always at the end of a song on
> my xmms playlist, xmms stops playing and (ALSA? artsd?) generates this 
> dialog:
> 
> 	couldn't open audio
> 	Please check that
> 	your soundcard is configured properly
> 	you have the correct output plugin selected
> 	no sound program is blocking the soundcard
> 
> Sometimes there's an accompanyng alert tone, sometimes not. Xmms doesn't
> crash... it just stops playing. When this happens, sometimes I
> immediately try to click play again; other times I simply continue with
> whatever I was doing until It's convenient to ctrl-tab over to xmms and
> press play then. And, again, sometimes pressing play immediately starts
> the music right up. But other times, the dialog re-asserts itself and I
> get no joy.
> 
> Sometimes when this happens, I've selected a different xmms output
> plugin, and other times I've just left it on ALSA. It seems to make no 
> difference in the behavior. And *always*, if I wait long enough, xmms 
> will allow me to continue listening. Sometimes after only one click of 
> the play button, sometimes not for ten minutes. 
> 
> A quick search of Google Groups reveals nothing that seems to pertain;
> RedHat's documentation doesn't cover this; I found a troubleshooting
> script here:
> 
> http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=aadebug
> 
> which doesn't seem to uncover anything out-of-the-ordinary (other than
> not being able to find lsmod and lspci)...
> 
> *************************************************************************
> ALSA Audio Debug v0.0.8 - Tue Feb 15 11:07:02 PST 2005
> http://alsa.opensrc.org/?aadebug
> 
> Kernel ----------------------------------------------------
> Linux mhall 2.6.5-1.358 #1 Sat May 8 09:04:50 EDT 2004 i686 i686 i386
> GNU/Linux
> 
> Loaded Modules --------------------------------------------
> bin/./alsack.sh: line 10: lsmod: command not found
> 
> Modprobe Conf ---------------------------------------------
> alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
> install snd-intel8x0 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-intel8x0 &&
> /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
> remove snd-intel8x0 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; };
> /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-intel8x0
> 
> Proc Asound -----------------------------------------------
> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.4rc2 (Tue Mar 30
> 08:19:30 2004 UTC).
> Compiled on May  8 2004 for kernel 2.6.5-1.358.
> 0 [I82801BAICH2   ]: ICH - Intel 82801BA-ICH2
>                      Intel 82801BA-ICH2 at 0xd800, irq 10
>   0: [0- 0]: ctl
>  25: [0- 1]: digital audio capture
>  16: [0- 0]: digital audio playback
>  24: [0- 0]: digital audio capture
>   1:       : sequencer
>  33:       : timer
> cat: /proc/asound/hwdep: No such file or directory
> 00-00: Intel ICH : Intel 82801BA-ICH2 : playback 1 : capture 1
> 00-01: Intel ICH - MIC ADC : Intel 82801BA-ICH2 - MIC ADC : capture 1
> 
> Dev Snd ---------------------------------------------------
> controlC0  hwC2D0    midiC0D4  midiC2D0  midiC3D4  pcmC0D4c  pcmC1D2c
> pcmC2D0c  pcmC2D6c  pcmC3D4c
> controlC1  hwC2D1    midiC0D5  midiC2D1  midiC3D5  pcmC0D4p  pcmC1D2p
> pcmC2D0p  pcmC2D6p  pcmC3D4p
> controlC2  hwC2D2    midiC0D6  midiC2D2  midiC3D6  pcmC0D5c  pcmC1D3c
> pcmC2D1c  pcmC2D7c  pcmC3D5c
> controlC3  hwC2D3    midiC0D7  midiC2D3  midiC3D7  pcmC0D5p  pcmC1D3p
> pcmC2D1p  pcmC2D7p  pcmC3D5p
> hwC0D0     hwC3D0    midiC1D0  midiC2D4  pcmC0D0c  pcmC0D6c  pcmC1D4c
> pcmC2D2c  pcmC3D0c  pcmC3D6c
> hwC0D1     hwC3D1    midiC1D1  midiC2D5  pcmC0D0p  pcmC0D6p  pcmC1D4p
> pcmC2D2p  pcmC3D0p  pcmC3D6p
> hwC0D2     hwC3D2    midiC1D2  midiC2D6  pcmC0D1c  pcmC0D7c  pcmC1D5c
> pcmC2D3c  pcmC3D1c  pcmC3D7c
> hwC0D3     hwC3D3    midiC1D3  midiC2D7  pcmC0D1p  pcmC0D7p  pcmC1D5p
> pcmC2D3p  pcmC3D1p  pcmC3D7p
> hwC1D0     midiC0D0  midiC1D4  midiC3D0  pcmC0D2c  pcmC1D0c  pcmC1D6c
> pcmC2D4c  pcmC3D2c  seq
> hwC1D1     midiC0D1  midiC1D5  midiC3D1  pcmC0D2p  pcmC1D0p  pcmC1D6p
> pcmC2D4p  pcmC3D2p  timer
> hwC1D2     midiC0D2  midiC1D6  midiC3D2  pcmC0D3c  pcmC1D1c  pcmC1D7c
> pcmC2D5c  pcmC3D3c
> hwC1D3     midiC0D3  midiC1D7  midiC3D3  pcmC0D3p  pcmC1D1p  pcmC1D7p
> pcmC2D5p  pcmC3D3p
> 
> CPU -------------------------------------------------------
> model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 1.50GHz
> cpu MHz         : 1483.674
> 
> RAM -------------------------------------------------------
> MemTotal:       516688 kB
> SwapTotal:     1048816 kB
> 
> Hardware --------------------------------------------------
> bin/./alsack.sh: line 50: lspci: command not found
> 
> *************************************************************************
> 
> I don't even know where to start looking for a solution...
> 
> --
> Marc Elliot Hall
> P.O. Box 435
> Shingle Springs, CA 95682
> www.hallmarc.net
> _______________________________________________
> vox-tech mailing list
> vox-tech at lists.lugod.org
> http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
> 


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