I have been posting this under Gentoo's bugzilla and phonon's mailing list with no luck... Let's try here...

Whatever device is selected among the list of Device Preference leads to an
identical result when the vlc backend is selected.
No problem with the xine backend.

-- Environment ------
KDE 4.7.4 but this was also the case under last 4.6
phonon-4.5.1-r1 + phonon-vlc-0.4.0 + phonon-xine-4.4.4

-- Device list with the vlc backend selected --------
Showing "Advanced devices" 11 devices are shown including :
Alsa Default | The HDA (which outputs are not connected) | The ICE1712
compatible device which outputs to an external amplifier | jack (running) |
dummy | out_file | loopbacks... aso...

--- Problem details ----------
Whatever the device I select and apply to everything, I can hear sound when
depressing the test button.
which obviously should not be the case with devices such as HDA, dummy,
out_file...
When jack is selected, jackd sees no client.[This is normal, I have already been told this does not work) ]
Moreover, I do not even think that the first device in the list (Alsa-Default)
is chosen because my Alsa-Default is made around dmix + resampling and the
sound I can hear is obviously not resampled.

Everything is absolutely correct when selecting the xine backend.
I get a more reduced set of devices but I correctly hear nothing when testing
the HDA, jackd sees an additional client when I select jack... aso.


Reproducible: Always

You might want to install PulseAudio.

apachelogger wrote:You might want to install PulseAudio.

You must be joking
No I might not want.
Do you mean I should ?

http://apachelog.wordpress.com/2011/01/ ... ily-4-4-4/

"Further more it is highly recommended to use Phonon in combination with PulseAudio as it improves user experience a lot and makes smarter choices about default output devices."

Best guess is that you are affected by https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=255310 of which I am still not quite sure why it is broken.

apachelogger wrote:Best guess is that you are affected by https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=255310 of which I am still not quite sure why it is broken.

Thanks a lot ! This indeed looks like what I am experimenting.