Hello,

it's been quite a time since I've been using Kubuntu - and I've never really configured any hardware. So, maybe somebody here can help me.

I'm using an old Creative Soundblaster SB0270 with an optical output to play back my musical library. At first, the impression was pretty positive - I immediately got sound through amarok. Playback, however, is less pleasing. The sound jitters every now and then - and worst of all, my amplifier loses sync during the track gaps (since there seems to be coming no signal from the soundblaster during breaks). This doesn't seem to be a hardware issue since I used a similar setup on my Desktop computer (under Windows 7). Now I've tried several workarounds (Winamp with wine; a second player running simultaneously providing a signal between breaks), but nothing seems to be working.

I've found a solution for configuring playback over an digital output on the amarok support page, but it requires the xine engine (which no longer seems to be supported by KDE). My question thus is: how do I configure gstreamer/phonon/amarok properly to get proper playback through the digital output...

Any help would be very appreciated. Many thanks in advance.

I don't have an optical so this is a guess:
systemsettings -> multimedia -> phonon -> audio hardware setup -> profile -> set to digital output (iec958)

Many thanks for your help. Really appreciated.

Unfortunately, it didn't solve the problem. Neither did kaffeine

try a different phonon backend

which distribution? did you google it with the phrase optical output or something similar?

Does your system use Pulseaudio?

Does your soundcard has hardware mixing? If so, you really should leave pulseaudio.
I've got an old audigy 2 zs with hardware mixing and it's really great without pulse!

But nevertheless even if it does not support this feature, disabeling pulseaudio is worth a try.
Also make sure, your optical output isn't muted. Best to find out is (in my opinion) alsamixer via terminal.