Hi everybody,

I have Amarok playing. However any system notifications cause it to go silent. All the visual indications within Amarok (play, stop, forward etc) suggest that the application is still running. So I'm guessing that it its downstream somewhere? Mixer maybe?
The only way I can find to get any audio output from Amarok (other than a reboot) after this is to:
Swtich Amarok to STOP, Close and reopen Amarok and then press PLAY again!

Now this is where I get out of my depth! Because, you'll need to know my setup, and I'm not sure that I know enough to provide it accurately. So please prompt me if you think that you can help.

What (I think) I know is:
SuSE 11.4 64bit
KDE 4.6.00
YaST | Hardware | Sound = 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HDA
KDE System Settings | Multimedia | Phonon = Internal Audio Digital Stereo (IEC958)

Any advice or suggestions will be most welcome. It's most annoying!

Regards, Martin

questions:

When you say notifications you mean sound not popups?

what is systemsettings -> application and system notifications -> manage notifications -> player settings -> ?

Amarok is only media player affected this way?

Version of Amarok?

Phonend backend used?

Hi Bill,
Thanks for coming back so quickly. I hope the following are relevant answers.

When you say notifications you mean sound not popups?

Err..? I mean that when I do something silly like try to exit an application without first saving, there is a visual popup that says "Do you want to..." and there is an audio fanfare. I am guessing that it is this fanfare that is conflicting with the output of my media player?

what is systemsettings -> application and system notifications -> manage notifications -> player settings -> ?

The "Use the KDE sound system" radio button is checked.

Amarok is only media player affected this way?

No, as far as I can tell it is all the media players that I have tried: for example Kaffine and various browser plugins (Flash etc) all behave similarly. I only quoted Amarok to keep it specific.

Version of Amarok?

2.4.0

Phonend backend used?

GStreamer, then Xine

Regards, Martin

you can try turning off audio notifications in systemsettings if they're not important - obviously a workaround not a solution

you can try as a different user to determine if it's your config or a system problem

you can try the phonon-vlc backend, the Xine also but as it's no longer supported it's not a long term solution if it works.

Thanks for the tips, Bill.

you can try the phonon-vlc backend

Okay, I gave that a try. Not a complete fix, but it does allow my audio apps to produce an output by just cycling STOP then PLAY. No need to close the application and open it again.

Small steps....

Regards, Martin

you could try up'ing to 4.7.x, mostly bug patches so little upgrade risk

what version of libphon? and the phonon backends?

Hi again Bill,

you could try up'ing to 4.7.x

Hmmmm.... That may be a step too far! I've limited my enabled repos to the minimum openSuSE ones. I'll wait until the awfully-nice packagers make 4.7 available as an automated upgrade.

what version of libphon? and the phonon backends?

libphon4 = ver 4.4.4-3.1
phonon = 4.4.4-3.1
phonon-backend-gstreamer-0_10 = 4.4.4-3.1
phonon-backend-xine = 4.4.4-3.1
phonon-backend-vlc = 0.3.2-6.2

Regards, Martin

they're old - if you look at the 4.6 repo page you'll see it has libphonon4 at 4.5 http://download.opensuse.org/repositori ... .4/x86_64/ there's something amiss in your repo config as it should have been up'ed

I'm not sure the awfully-nice packagers will make 4.7 available as an automated upgrade unless you upgrade to openSuse 12.1 (coming soon)

Hi Bill,

Another day - another over...

they're old - there's something amiss in your repo config as it should have been up'ed

Ta.. corrected and up'ed (inc. related backends). However, no difference Ho hum.
Am I missing something here? What is it that must be sitting between the audio apps (inc. whatever service it is that throws notifications) and the sound hardware? There must be some sort of mixer to allow a notification to be added to an already running audio stream. Shouldn't I be looking there?

I'm not sure the awfully-nice packagers will make 4.7 available as an automated upgrade unless you upgrade to openSuse 12.1 (coming soon)

Ah.... Fun and games a'coming then!

Regards, Martin

sorry - no idea

suggest you start new thread with more relevant title "notifications stop sound in media applications" or similar