I am testing out kde. Haven't used it in ~5-6 yrs now. Been using gnome and xfce mainly.

Anyway, I can't get sound to work in kde. Sound does work in gnome. I am using ubuntu 8.10. Also, I have the following card [from lspci]:

03:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 (rev 0a)
03:06.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Live! Game Port (rev 0a)

amarok shows music is playing. Is there a difference between gnome and kde when it comes to playing audio?

Have you checked yoru Phonon settings? Open System Settings and go to "Multimedia" under Computer Administration.

There is no such thing like a KDE audio server anymore, so basically no, there is no difference, except that KDE4 comes with an abstraction library called "Phonon", which makes it easier for application developers to offer different backends (like Gstreamer, Xine, DirectAudio, etc.). iirc amarok also has got audio preferences, so you should check that as well, after looking at the system settings. Which version of Amarok are you using? 1.x or a beta of 2?

I am using amarok 1.4.10. It's not specific to amarok though. Any app that plays sound. I opened sound settings and had the choice of xine or Gstreamer. Both fail to produce sound in kde.

How do I troubleshoot this?

The configuration in system settings is for Phonon, which is only used by KDE4 apps, amarok 1.4 is a KDE3 app.
Amarok 1.4 has its own preferences dialogue where you have to choose a backend for what you've installed (Xine e.g., but be sure its actually installed). Do you have artsd running?

Ok...let's stay away from amarok since it seems it chgs based on version.

Is there a kde specific app that plays audio in kde4 and uses phonon if that's the proper library?

Try Dragon Player. Did you check if you've got artsd running? If so, no other sound system will be able to use audio.

Hi all,

I know this is an old topic, but I recently had this problem when I switched from Gnome to KDE.

Sound works in Gnome (Youtube, MP3, Rhythmbox, etc.) I log out and switch to KDE... no sound!

I figured out that in KDE, the KMix sound icon, on the bottom status bar, has a "Select Master Channel..." This only represents one of the many sound outputs in the system.

Here's what I did:
1) Right click on KMix sound icon. A settings menu should pop up, sometimes it pops up in the background.

2) The settings menu should say "Master, Headphone, Speaker, PCM, etc." Select Master, for example, then your Sound Icon will change.

3) Go down to the sound icon and raise the volume to max.

4) Repeat with "Headphone", then "Speakers", then all the way down to "Beep".


I found that my "PCM" was set on mute and when I raised that to max volume, Youtube started to play sound.

I hope this helps. I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 with KDE Desktop.