I'm try to play a files as .wav, .mp3, .tta with amarok-1.1.1 player throw gstreamer-0.8.7
and I see too big processor load about ~ 100 % on my Celeron 2.6 GHz.

How this problem may be resolved ?

Thanks in advance

Pavel Zhiln
http://www.true-audio.com

I have the same trouble.
I am also using gstreamer-0.8.7 and I have found that using it with alsasink makes the CPU goto 100%, using osssink is better however.
I tested gstearmer using gst-launch filesrc location=filename.mp3 ! mad ! alsasink
and it was fine, so its a problem with amarok.

If you search the forum there are a few things about this, so it sounds like a bug in there somewhere.

Caveman

Hi,

I have this with amaroK CVS too:
alsasink uses all available CPU power, osssink uses <10% on my 1.7GHz P4, but osssink gives me audio clicks especially when a new song starts.

Regards,
Andreas

Yeah, the xine engine seems to be the better of the 3.
However it would be nice if the affects worked with it.

Caveman

Hi,

Caveman wrote:

Yeah, the xine engine seems to be the better of the 3.
However it would be nice if the affects worked with it.

Caveman

I'd love to use the xine engine (as I used to some weeks ago) but if I want to switch to it it only says something like "xine was unable to initialize any audio-drivers". If I use xine-ui sound works OK.
I'm using xine-lib-1_rc6 and amaroK CVS on kernel 2.6.9 alsa.

Any ideas how to get xine engine to work (or how to add more debug infos)?

Thanks in advance!

Andreas

I had that problem this afternoon - but i haven't had time to look into it.

I overcame it by editing the config file, situated in

$HOME/.kde/share/config/amarokrc

and editing the line which says
Sound System=xine-engine
in the [Playback] section.

Pavel Zhilin wrote:

I'm try to play a files as .wav, .mp3, .tta with amarok-1.1.1 player throw gstreamer-0.8.7
and I see too big processor load about ~ 100 % on my Celeron 2.6 GHz.

Which distro are you using?

How this problem may be resolved ?

Use osssink instead.

A possible reason for the "100% CPU" problem is that you do not have mixing activated for your alsa, and the sound device is blocked by another application. You must configure alsa with a mixing facility, which lets multiple applications output sound at the same time.

If you do not have hardware-mixing available (e.g. with SBLive), you need to install the dmix plugin for alsa, and specify "dmix" as device in the engine settings.

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

markey wrote:

A possible reason for the "100% CPU" problem is that you do not have mixing activated for your alsa, and the sound device is blocked by another application. You must configure alsa with a mixing facility, which lets multiple applications output sound at the same time.

Yeap, thats what it is. It would seem if you have a sound card that cant support mixing you need to have dmix installed, otherwise amarok using alsasink gets very upset.

Its easy to setup as well. I did this.
create a /etc/asound.conf file and added this to it.
[code:1]
pcm.nforce-hw {
type hw
card 0
}
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "nforce"
}
pcm.dsp {
type plug
slave.pcm "nforce"
}
pcm.nforce {
type dmix
ipc_key 1234
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 32768
rate 44100
}
}
# mixer can stay unchanged, because it isn't used anyway, I guess ;«»)
ctl.mixer {
type dmix
card 0
}
[/code:1]

Now remember thats for a nforce card, you might need to change that abit. Then just set amarok to use alsasink and its all good.

Can this be added to the FAQ ? I have noticed a few posts in the forum high CPU.

Caveman

I am having the same problem described here. In addition, the xine engine works for me, but it crashes amarok whenever it goes from ogg to mp3 or flac.

-Z

FAQ updated:

http://amarok.kde.org/component/option,com_staticxt/staticfile,playback.html#id247243