If the Beep channel is not muted, I hear massive screeching even if no sound content is playing and even if the volume slider is at its minimum setting. If I mute it, screeching stops completely.

I do not have any other problems with sound though. I could leave the Beep channel muted, but I'd like to figure out what the problem is since I didn't have it when using KDE 4.3 on sidux (I'm now running Debian unstable + KDE 4.4).

EDIT: Actually, I have no sound in certain cases (for example, when using flash video or VLC player). Sound works in KDE's Multimedia section when I press the "Test" button. It works in JuK, too. Any ideas how I should fix the problem?

If you create a new user, can you reproduce?

I added a new user as suggested. Here are the things I noticed.

1. Upon login I get a Phonon notification "The audio playback device Internal PC-Speaker (pcsp) does not work" (I do not get this message when logging in with my original user).
2. KDE login/logout sound works, sound in JuK works as well.
3. Sound in VLC, Flash does not work.
4. By default KMix has the wrong master channel selected (it is set to pcsp master). After changing the volume with the slider, the reported sound volume (mouseover percentage) does not change (the slider position does persist though). If I change (via "Select Master Channel...") the master channel to that of HDA ATI SB, volume control becomes functional as it should be.
5. In KMix I can add and view all the channels for HDA ATI SB (via Settings -> Configure Channels...) but I cannot do the same for pcsp. pcsp has "BaseFRQ" (it has a question mark icon besides it) as one of the available channels to choose from but once I add it to the visible channel list and click OK, Kmix segfaults.
6. Screeching is there too. I can stop it by muting the Beep channel OR the Speaker channel (obviously, in the latter case there won't be any sound anywhere then).

Sound card:

Code: Select all

00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
        Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1339
        Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 64, IRQ 16
        Memory at febf4000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
        Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel

Please let me know if you need any more info regarding the issue. I'd really like to get this sorted out as it's quite an annoying problem.

It appears that ALSA believes that your internal PC speaker is a standard speaker it can use. Can you please post the output of "aplay -l"?

Here you go:

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root@LAPTOP:~# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: pcsp [pcsp], device 0: pcspeaker [pcsp]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC660-VD Analog [ALC660-VD Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 6: Si3054 Modem [Si3054 Modem]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

The following line is the cause of this issue:

Code: Select all

card 0: pcsp [pcsp], device 0: pcspeaker [pcsp]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Please check your ALSA configuration, you may need to blacklist a module, or file an ALSA bug.

This is odd. aplay was not installed on my system when you asked me to provide its output, so I simply installed the alsa-utils package that contained it. This also installed alsa-base and linux-sound-base. Now when I login using either my original user (created during OS installation) or the test one, I get KDE message about pcsp device being removed and asking me if I want KDE to forget it. pcsp tab is missing in KMix. My original user has all the sound now (VLC works, Flash works as well) but upon login gets a different Phonon notification (device jack audio connection kit does not work). The test user gets "device alsa default output does not work" notification.

Why did the installation of the mentioned packages changed things? Are they mandatory? Doesn't seem like so but then again they seem to have had positive effect (even if things aren't looking completely clean yet because of Phonon notifications).

That is extremely weird that the ALSA sound drivers would not be included in a default installation....

In any case, removing /var/tmp/kdecache-$USER/libphonon/hardwaredatabase outside KDE should be sufficient to sort out Phonon.

That is extremely weird that the ALSA sound drivers would not be included in a default installation....

I don't believe those packages contained drivers. I did have sound without installing them but not in all apps. However, after digging a little, it seems that alsa-base provides some configuration files and they do blacklist pcsp (which is a good thing). When I didn't have it, pcsp would be loaded first and hence no sound.

Anyway, thanks for helping me find the solution.

In any case, removing /var/tmp/kdecache-$USER/libphonon/hardwaredatabase outside KDE should be sufficient to sort out Phonon.

Actually, that didn't help. The notification about jack audio connection kit not working is still there. Anything else I could try?

Open System Settings > Multimedia and ensure the appropriate Device is at the top of the list.

The sound card is at the top of the list of each section.

Which backend do you have selected in System Settings > Multimedia > Backends? You may need to uninstall the backend appropriate jack output.

I'm using xine. The only thing installed that has "jack" in its name is libjack0 and it's not xine-specific. Maybe I need jackd?

KDE shouldn't need jackd ( mine doesn't use it and jackd isn't even installed ).

Try removing ~/.xine