hey everybody, new here.

im having a slight issue with amarok, and have been since i started using it. when ever i press the play/pause button, i get a lag of about 3 seconds before it reacts, which is incredibly annoying. i've googled for an answer to this problem to no success. im running ubuntu 10.04, im rather new to this whole business. amarok is running pulseaudio because it doesnt like my soundcard?

any help greatly appreciated, thanks

Well, the lag can be cause by a lot of different factors, do you use Gnome? Amarok is a KDE app and natively doesn't need Pulseaudio. I can't see any gap when clicking on play/pause here with Amarok 2.3.1-git on Kubuntu 10.04, using KDE SC 4.5.beta 2.

First of all you should try using the soundcard directly instead of using Pulseaudio, by checking the Phonon settings in Settings -> Configure Amarok -> Playback, "Configure Phonon" button. There is a test button, also make sure to use the phonon-backend-xine (with libxine-ffmpeg for the codecs).

i get this error message both when i press play for the first time in amarok(per boot) and when i try to test my sound card:

"the audio plaback device HDA Intel (ALC889A) does not work falling back to playback/recording through pulseaudio server"

i only get this error with amarok, im using the xine backend and all of that. im not sure what gnome is but i dont think i use it.

Hm, now this is either an problem in Phonon or Pulseaudio, I will try getting hold of a dev for that.

been doing some more tinkering, ect, the issue with the lag is defiantly pulseaudio, and if i remove pulseaudio i get no playback at all.

so quite stuck, i like amarok alot, and haven't found anything that does media as good as it, but this is really annoying

In the case of Pulseaudio causing the issue, then all applications on your system should be affected.

im not sure about how my other programs output(whether they use pulseaudio or something else) but the issue is only in amarok. its the only program which gives the "falling back to pulseaudio" error so i would assume that the other programs dont use pulseaudio or dont have an issue with it.

Amarok doesn't produce that error, Phonon does. Try disabling Pulseaudio for applications that run Phonon, you can configure that in SystemSettings -> Multimedia. There is also a test button, for the various devices (activate the "Show advanced devices" option). Push on top the one that works and to the bottom the one that doesn't.

under ubuntu i dont have that menu/menu option, but when configuring phonon in amarok, using the test button i cannot get any output from my "HDA Intel(ALC889A Analog), and when i run amarok with pulseaudio uninstalled i get no playback at all.

i cant determine whether the lag is coming from pulseaudio or from something else in amarok, however when i use rhythmbox i get no lag and sound works fine with pulseaudio removed.

is there an alternative to pulseaudio? how do i get audio working under my intel device?

If you uninstall Pulseaudio, then create a new user, does Amarok function there?

doing what you said above, worked, the other account worked fine with pulseaudio unintalled, and when i logged back into my account, it also worked.

i think the only issue here is my newbness and me not knowing that i needed to logout and log back in when i uninstalled pulseaudio

thanks for all your help