I'm running KDE 4.1.87 on Gentoo. Sound works fine in KDE 3.5 and also under KDE 4 as long as the app is not using Phonon.

Phonon-aware apps like Amarok 2 cannot play any sounds. When I pull up systemsettings->multimedia I can see my sound card in the device tab. However, under the backends tab there are no backends listed at all.

Also, if I select my sound card in the device-tab and press "test" there is no sound played. I'm not getting any error messages.

Debug output when I press test is:

systemsettings(25176) MainWindow::selectionChanged: Selected item: "Multimedia"
systemsettings(25176) MainWindow::selectionChanged: Comment: "Sound and Video Configuration"
systemsettings(25176) MainWindow::selectionChanged: Selected item: "Multimedia"
systemsettings(25176) MainWindow::selectionChanged: Comment: "Sound and Video Configuration"
virtual bool Phonon::Gstreamer::AudioOutput::setOutputDevice(const Phonon::AudioOutputDevice&) "Sound Fusion CS46xx (CS46xx)"
virtual bool Phonon::Gstreamer::AudioOutput::setOutputDevice(const Phonon::AudioOutputDevice&) ("x-phonon:CARD=0,DEV=0", "plughw:CARD=0,DEV=0")
virtual bool Phonon::Gstreamer::AudioOutput::setOutputDevice(const Phonon::AudioOutputDevice&) setProperty(device, "x-phonon:CARD=0,DEV=0" ) succeeded
virtual bool Phonon::Gstreamer::AudioOutput::setOutputDevice(const Phonon::AudioOutputDevice&) go to old state on device "x-phonon:CARD=0,DEV=0" succeeded

Any ideas on troubleshooting this?

Could you look under $KDEDIR/share/kde4/services/phononbackends and see what files are present. You should have at least one.

Thanks for the reply. It helped me make some progress. I found that Gentoo put the backends in /usr/share/kde4/services/phononbackends, but when KDE3.5 and KDE4 are both installed KDEDIR points to /usr/kde/4.2. So as a workaround I made a softlink: /usr/kde/4.2/share/kde4/services/phononbackends -> /usr/share/kde4/services/phononbackends.

Now I see xine and gstreamer listed as backends. The xine options in that same window look reasonable: I see de-interlacing options and there's a xine logo. Gstreamer looks broken, no logo, just a questionmark, no other options.

Amarok still does not play any sounds, although it now displays a song progress bar which it didn't before.

With xine selected as backend, I tried the "test" button in systemsettings:

I have 3 devices isted: "sound fusion cs46xx", "Arts" and "ESD". If I do a test on ESD or Arts I get a popup window saying "The playback device does not work, falling back to Sound fusion". If a test on the sound fusion I get no error message. There is no sound play whatever I choose. There are aso no debug messages on the console.

Here's some debug output I got from amarok that might be helpful:

QString::arg: Argument missing: Amarok - No track playing., 0:00
QString::arg: Argument missing: Amarok - No track playing., 0:00
QString::arg: Argument missing: Amarok - No track playing., 0:00
request to play a stream, but no valid audio/video outputs are given/available
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStream::KioMediaStream:
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStream::reset:
ERROR: backend MediaObject reached ErrorState after 1 . It seems a KioMediaStream will not help here, trying anyway.
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStream::reset:
QString::arg: Argument missing: Amarok - No track playing., 0:00
QString::arg: Argument missing: Amarok - No track playing., 0:00
QString::arg: Argument missing: Amarok - No track playing., 0:00
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStreamPrivate::_k_bytestreamSeekDone: 0
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStreamPrivate::_k_bytestreamFileJobOpen: 4935680
xine is asking to seek behind the end of the data stream
xine is asking to seek behind the end of the data stream
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStream::seekStream: 4935552 = 4935552
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStreamPrivate::_k_bytestreamSeekDone: 4935552
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStreamPrivate::_k_bytestreamData: empty data: stopping the stream
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStream::seekStream: no job/job finished -> recreate it
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStream::reset:
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStream::seekStream: 0 = 0
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStreamPrivate::_k_bytestreamSeekDone: 0
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStreamPrivate::_k_bytestreamFileJobOpen: 4935680
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStream::enoughData:
amarok(3512)/phonon (KDE plugin) Phonon::KioMediaStream::enoughData:

I'm wondering if there are more files that got installed in the wrong directory?

Sounds like Phonon hasn't had CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX set properly. You may wish to report this to the Gentoo developers.

You will therefore need to symlink these directories if they are empty or do not exist:

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$KDEDIR/lib/kde4/plugins/phonon_backend to /usr/lib/kde4/plugins/phonon_backend
$KDEDIR/lib/kde4/plugins/phonon_backend to /usr/lib/kde4/plugins/phonon_platform

I posted on the gentoo forums and it seems they are aware of the prefix issue although it has not been fixed yet.

I made the symlinks but I'm still not getting any sound.

When I first logon to KDE I can go to systemsettings and press test and it does play. But when I try a few minutes later there's no sound... very odd. Also, Amarok never plays any sound. The Gentoo forum recommends removing gstreamer and only use xine so I tried that but no difference.

I've made sure xine works by itself. I use a small CLI app (picoxine) that lets me verify xine is functional. It works with the sink set to alsa and arts. The ESD sink is not functional though.

But still phonon is not able to play anything.

What does phonon require to send sound to xine (as far as config files, libs etc)?

You may wish to additionally check for these files under $KDEDIR:

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./share/kde4/servicetypes/phononbackend.desktop     
./share/kde4/services/kcm_phonon.desktop           
./share/kde4/services/kcm_phononxine.desktop       
./share/kde4/services/phononbackends               
./share/kde4/services/phononbackends/xine.desktop   
./share/kde4/services/kded/phononserver.desktop     
./share/apps/libphonon/hardwaredatabase             
./share/apps/phonon/phonon.notifyrc
./lib/libphononexperimental.so.4                   
./lib/libphononexperimental.so                     
./lib/pkgconfig/phonon.pc                           
./lib/libphononexperimental.so.4.3.0               
./lib/libphonon.so                                 
./lib/libphonon.so.4.3.0                           
./lib/kde4/kcm_phonon.so                           
./lib/kde4/kcm_phononxine.so                       
./lib/kde4/plugins/phonon_platform/kde.so           
./lib/kde4/plugins/phonon_backend/phonon_xine.so   
./lib/kde4/kded_phononserver.so                     
./lib/libphonon.so.4                               
./lib/kconf_update_bin/phonon_devicepreference_update
./lib/kconf_update_bin/phonon_deviceuids_update

These are all the Phonon related files I have in my Trunk install directory. Note that I excluded icons because they are not needed to play sound.

Icons list anyway:

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./share/icons/oxygen/128x128/apps/phonon-xine.png   
./share/icons/oxygen/32x32/apps/phonon-xine.png     
./share/icons/oxygen/16x16/apps/phonon-xine.png     
./share/icons/oxygen/22x22/apps/phonon-xine.png     
./share/icons/oxygen/64x64/apps/phonon-xine.png     
./share/icons/oxygen/scalable/apps/phonon-xine.svgz
./share/icons/oxygen/48x48/apps/phonon-xine.png

Well, quite a delay since my last post, but I finally have working sound in amarok 2. The trick was to install pulseaudio. Before pulseaudio the "Output devices" would only have "Soundfusion cs46xx" (my sound card). Now I have Pulseaudio as the top choice and Amarok 2 works fine.

BTW, to enable pulseaudio in Gentoo I just had to add the pulseaudio use flag in /etc/make.conf and rebuild with emerge -uvaDN world.