Dear all,

as I didn't find an appropriate forum to ask my question, I try to put it here in the multimedia forum and hope that it is OK to do so and that you find it here.

I have severe problems with Phonon, as it doesn't list all my sound sources (e.g. laptop and HDMI monitor). Only one is activated and the other is grey and can neither be deleted nor changed. The computer (Kubuntu 12.04) doesn't recognize the change of sound sources, when I disable the monitor for example. There simply is no sound at all then.

The same applies to the tool KMix. When I open it, I only see one vertical column for the HDMI monitor. There is no other column for the internal laptop speaker, which I believe used to be there before.

Would you please help me? What can I do to solve these issues? Under Ubuntu it works perfectly well.

What could/should I do to get the other sound source enabled too?

Thank you for your replies,
best regards,
Kelley

Is your system using Pulseaudio?
Also, which Phonon backend are you using?

Hello,

my KDE version is: "Plattform-Version 4.8.4 (4.8.4)".

Kernel version: 3.2.0-29-generic

Kubuntu version:
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=precise
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS"

The PulseAudio-Soundserver seems to be installed. Whether the system uses it or is unknown to me. (When I click on the software-center there is a little green mark next to it, which means that the software is installed.)

When I click in Phonon in the backend tab I see the following two entries: GStreamer and VLC. The GStreamer Driver has the version 4.6.0 and the VLC driver is 0.5.0.

I hope that this helps you, because I don't know any further.

Thank you for your help,
best regards,
Kelley

Okay, please post the output of the following command to determine if Pulseaudio is in use:

Code: Select all

ps aux | grep pulseaudio

Also, can you reproduce this behaviour under a new user?

Thank you for your help.

This is the message, which I have received in the terminal window:

kelley@ubuntu:~$ ps aux | grep pulseaudio
kelley 6655 0.1 0.0 370864 6368 ? S<l 10:51 0:05 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog
kelley 6674 0.0 0.0 95968 3260 ? S 10:51 0:00 /usr/lib/pulseaudio/pulse/gconf-helper
kelley 9289 0.0 0.0 15104 940 pts/1 S+ 11:42 0:00 grep --color=auto pulseaudio
kelley@ubuntu:~$

Does this help?

Okay, your system is using Pulseaudio.
Just to make sure no user specific configuration is doing this, does it work under a new user?

Hi, I have just set up another user and tried it with the same effect: The sound systems don't change automatically. When I manually change the setting for an entry, this will be the hardware output for the sounds. Each time I disconnect the laptop from the monitor, I have to manually change the setting. I then have to do the same, when I connect the laptop to the monitor again.

Thank you for your help.
Best regards,
Kelley

When a sound output becomes no longer available (ie. is greyed out) it should automatically fall back to the next choice.
Does an output become greyed out when you disconnect the monitor, etc?

It doesn't do so automatically. There are some sound outputs greyed out, but they don't automatically fall back to the next choice. When I disconnect the monitor the monitor sound profile remains active and there is no sound coming out of the laptop speakers. When I manually change the sound profile there is sound from the speakers. And when I reconnect the monitor the laptop sound profile remains active, which I then have to change accordingly.

I trully appreciate all your help,
thanks,
Kelley

That is very odd.
Can you please provide the output of this command?

Code: Select all

pactl list | grep module-device-manager

Hi bcooksley,

I am very thankful for your help. I have just inserted the above command in the terminal window and the outcome is:

kelley@ubuntu:~$ pactl list | grep module-device-manager
Name: module-device-manager
kelley@ubuntu:~$

Hmm, does this help?

Thanks,
Kelley

Okay, that looks normal.
Could you provide a screenshot of the Phonon Device Selection dialog with one of the devices being disconnected please?

My current suspicion is that Pulseaudio is not detecting the disconnection of the device, and so is not disabling + falling back appropriately.

Hello,

I have attached a screenshot and I hope that it helps.



Thanks again for your help,
best regards,
Kelley

Okay. "Internes Audio Analog Stereo" is your internal speaker (including headphone output), and is indeed disabled...
If you go to the "Audio Hardware Setup" tab (beside Backend), and select your internal sound card from the 'Sound Card' drop down (it is labeled 'Internal Audio' here), can you check what profile is in use?

Here I have "Analog Stereo Duplex" selected.

Hi bcooksley,

I have just tried the duplex setting. (It was the first entry in the list.) Even when I restarted the computer, the sound only came out of the laptop speakers.

Since changing the settings manually works, it seems that I might have to change the settings manually in order to have the sounds coming out of the right speakers.

I truly appreciate all your help in this matter.
Thanks,
Kelley