Ok, many of us found it pretty tricky to make our beloved new shiny Amarok2 play music. So, as my eudaemon gave me those dark knowledges to make legendary wolf playback music i feel responsible to gave those sacred speels to you.
* Kraplax puts his hand under the hood and takes out his crystall ball.
"Oh, great Amarok, show us the path! Give us the way to hear our beloved music with the help of your superb tools!"

Ok, to be serious, follow these steps and i hope you'll get it playback your music.

1. Amarok plays only music from your collection. Be sure to add your music files to Amaroks collection - "Playlist -> Add Media..." and "Amarok -> Play media" won't do the trick!
2. Amarok uses mechanisms that differs from Winamp or VLC ones. So, "My Winamp plays music well" is not the argument. Though, by default in Wondows XP (and as far as i remember some later Windows versions too) are packed with media player, which uses similar backends as Amarok2. It's executable name is mplayer2.exe.
   It's really a problem with Amarok2/Phonon - Phonon shouldn't care what codec to use, though it has some quirks doing that.
3. Now, be sure to have DirectX installed. It's really pity if you have working Amarok and just don't have DirectX to be able to play music file because you just forgot to install it after another System reinstallation.
4. Back to MPlayer2 - it's very handy to use it to determine wether your system is capable of playing music. As gmw said -

   as soon as a file gets played with mplayer2, or zoom player, it should work with phonon/amarok.

   
   Just press "Win+R" ("Start -> Run...") and enter mplayer2.exe. Just drop any music file into that window and see if music plays. If no - read on to find out how to make it.
5. Ok, your mplayer2 failed to play it? Then, probably you need to install some codecs. Let's begin with - http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MP3 ... Filter.htm
   This'll solve the problem of some mp3s not playing for some unknown eason. As far as i could remember it was the problem with mp3 header length. This one is buggy, though - you might experience crashes if the whole playlist is finished and you try to playback next song.
6. Next, try this: http://www.free-codecs.com/DS_MP3_Sourc ... wnload.htm
   This codec is the preferred solution - recently Phonon was fixed so it'll handle it properly. For the moment of writing new Phonon packages aren't available yet, and this codec might not be the one that will solve your problems.
7. If DirectShow mp3 source filter (from previous step) didn't help then download these:
   http://www.free-codecs.com/download/FFDshow.htm
   http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Rad ... filter.htm
   The second one isn't needed if your music collection is entirely in mp3. The main thing is that ffdshow filter. Download and install with default settings.
8. After ffdshow is installed, run the ffdshow audio configuration tool. It should be in the start menu under respective menu entry alongside with the video configuration tool.
9. In the configuration window you'll see the subentries on the left and most probably the "Codecs" one will be selected already. So, on the right you'll see the table of configuration. In that table set mp3 to libmad, vorbis to Tremor, flac to disabled.
   If you're up to playback FLAC music, then you'll need FLAC codec, for example madFLAC one: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/madFLAC.htm Then you'll definitely want to set flac to madflac(or whatever it is possible).
10. Most probably it's not enough. Now, on the left click on the "DirectShow control" and on the right enable the checkbox labelled "Use ffdshow only in:". To the right you'll see the enabled button "Edit...". Click on it and in the new window press the "Add..." button. Navigate to your Amarok2 executable (i.e. C:Program FilesKDEbinamarok.exe) and chose it. It'll be added as amarok.exe to the existing list. Press Ok, then Ok again.

That's all. Now Amarok should play your music fine. When you first try to play a file, a ffdshow popup may appear asking you whether you want to use ffdshow. In that popoup choose "yes (always)".

This How'to will be edited to and corrected to make sure all playback issues could be solved with it.

As codec pack I generally use (and recommend) the "Combined Community Codec Pack" -- never had any problems with it (others, like the nemo codec pack, were generally a bad experience), and it contains audio and video filters for all the important formats, media splitters for ogg, mkv and flv, and subtitle decoders. And they check the different decoders for compatibility with each other, which is apparently sometimes problematic.

Here's the URL:
http://www.cccp-project.net/

Disclaimer: I'm in no way associated with that project, just a satisfied user

Thanks for the HowTo, Kraplax Good to see you're already on the forums =D

Yes, i'm glad to see you all here too

And what about different codecs - it's good that you have your own favourites that work fine with Amarok2, really. The codec(pack)s i've mentioned in the how-to ar just for example and are reported to be "compatible" with Amarok2. Just in case an average user doesn't have any of it's own preferences or they've failed to make Amarok produce a nice sound.
Anyway, thanks for any comments. Feel free to comment on points that i could've missed or been wrong about.

hehe, just installed amarok 2 beta 3, perfect, music out of the box, thanks guys for your work.
there is only this ennoying message about missing floppy ;) but i can live with it.

Missing floppy? When is it shown?
If you still use the floppy drive and need it - just wait for the bugfix for that long living bug. It shows not only in Amarok - every application that deals with Open/Save file dialogs encounter this message about missing media device (floppy or memory cards).
If you don't need your floppy (at least most of the time) and rebooting for you isn't a big deal - just disable floppy drive in your BIOS and be happy

What about flac files? For me it plays flac fine, but as soon as I want to change song position, it freezes. It can change the song position fine for mp3 files, so I'm unsure if it's a bug of Amarok or do I have some wrong settings?

Update: it must be some ffdshow bug, since now that I installed madflac, the freeze gone. However I cannot check ffdshow audio decoder configuration unfortunately, since I both have 32 and 64 bit versions installed of ffdshow and the latter overwrote my 32bit links in start menu... * shrugs

Hm.. Interesting peculiarities.
madFlac was installed and you haven't reconfigured your ffdshow after that, right? So, it's supposed to be set to disabled (or libavcodec). Try to find the ffdshow config links in Control Panel - probably there they weren't replaced (if at all placed).
Thanks for your note. I guess it's rather important thing to mention.

Kraplax wrote:Hm.. Interesting peculiarities.
madFlac was installed and you haven't reconfigured your ffdshow after that, right? So, it's supposed to be set to disabled (or libavcodec). Try to find the ffdshow config links in Control Panel - probably there they weren't replaced (if at all placed).
Thanks for your note. I guess it's rather important thing to mention.

OK that madFlac caused the FLAC problem go away. I created a link for the 32 bit audio configuration tool of ffdshow: I set both flac and mp3 to "disabled". Now FLAC plays fine, so that's cool.

However, the lenght of VBR MP3s are displayed incorrectly during the playback. For example, the playlist tells me 4:15, but as soon as I start to play, the seeking bar tells me -6:30 on the right. Is it a problem with Amarok or another codec glitch? This also happens if I set the mp3 either "disabled" or "libmad" in the FFDShow audio configuration tool. Also tried to add amarok.exe to "Don't use ffdshow in:" list. Still no change, so it might be another problem.

And finally a question: why is it that when I enable ffdshow for mp3s, I have two ffdshow icons open in the notification area when playing mp3s? One of them is constantly present until I exit Amarok, the other one disappears when I stop the playback and reappears when resuming.

edit: Oops I was stupid...

Turns out, that you did write down what I had to do to get it working, I just skipped over your step 5, because you said it was buggy.

Hm.. I guess one should use the buggy way if others don't work for him