Problemas de sonido

Entendiendo el sonido

Con el fin de entender el sonido en KDE, tienes que comprender el sonido en Linux (este capítulo asume que estás ejecutando KDE en Linux). Hay dos tipos de sistemas de sonido que se ejecutan en Linux: ALSA y OSS. Ambos proporcionan sus propios controladores para las tarjetas. ALSA solo funciona en Linux, mientras que OSS funciona en muchos sistemas UNIX. ALSA permite que varias aplicaciones tengan acceso a la tarjeta de sonido a la vez, OSS no. OSS proporciona un dispositivo para salida de sonido, y a este dispositivo solo puede acceder una aplicación a la vez. Para reducir la confusión, ALSA emula a OSS y también proporciona un dispositivo como interfaz para la tarjeta de sonido. Tanto ALSA como OSS normalmente llaman /dev/dsp al dispositivo de la tarjeta de sonido. PulseAudio, en algunas distribuciones, proporciona otra capa sobre estas. Su trabajo es gestionar varios flujos, de forma que, por ejemplo, puedas recibir una notificación de un mensaje mientras escuchas música.

Usual sound problems are

• You cannot play sound because you are using an application that tries to access the sound device /dev/dsp, but this device is already in use by another application.
• You cannot use the system-wide mixer kmix to adjust the volume of an application using the sound device /dev/dsp.
• Different applications play sound using different devices.

Solutions: There is no silver bullet solving all your sound problems. The solution depends on the application you use to play sound. As an example, you can use mplayer with ALSA and OSS. For more info, see mplayer's documentation by calling

mplayer -ao help

Here are some specific issues that you may meet.

KDE 4 uses the wrong sound device.

That is not an error, but a configuration issue. To tell KDE 4 which soundcard to use (or prefer if available), open System Settings and go to Multimedia in the General tab.

Devices from /etc/asound.conf or ~/.asoundrc are not listed.

Phonon uses a function introduced in ALSA 1.0.14 to find those devices. To make this function list your entry you need to add a name hint. E.g.

hint {
     show on
     description "Name to display for the device"
 }

Here is a complete example that adds a new volume control named Phonon to your mixer:

pcm.softvolPhonon {
     type softvol
     slave.pcm "default:CARD=0"
     control {
         name "Phonon"
         card 0
     }
     min_dB -51.0
     max_dB 0.0
     resolution 100
     hint {
         show on
         description "My Soundcard with extra Volume Control"
     }
 }

After an update, PulseAudio gives you very low volume

PulseAudio has a 'normaliser' function which can cause this. To turn it off, set flat-volumes = no in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf

You are using KDE 3 and you keep losing sound. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

KDE 3.x uses the aRts sound system. In earlier versions there were a number of problems, but in recent years the only problem remaining seems to be that aRts hangs on to the sound system when it has finished with it. To cure this, use kcontrol -> Sound & Multimedia. Towards the bottom of the General tab there is a setting for Auto-suspend if idle after: Set this to 1 second.

You have multimedia keys but KDE doesn't recognise them

This link has a clear description of what one user did to make his Volume-up and Volume-down keys work.

You tried all of the above but it still doesn't work (Ubuntu variants only)

Try replacing your sound card. If you still don't hear sound, check out this Ubuntu Community page