I've installed kdegames4, kdeedu4, and kdemultimedia4 successfully (the programs all run fine) via MacPorts . . . but there's no sound/audio.

In particular, trying klettres from kdeedu4 produces no sound. On the other hand, if I go into to the qtdemo application (installed by MacPorts in /Applications/MacPorts/Qt) and load the phonon test app, I do hear the test sound. So, QT can produce sound, but KDE can't. I've looked in the logs in Console.app, but don't see anything when I try to call a sound from a KDE app.

I installed kdegames4 and kdeedu4 roughly following this protocol: http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/m ... 18527.html

Anyone have any suggestions?

System info:
iBook G3 500 MHz and PowerBook G4 700 MHz (compiled on PB, tested on both, same result)
OS X 10.4.11 (latest)
XCode 2.5
MacPorts-1.8.2-10.4-Tiger (after selfupdate)

Thanks!

did you try raising all the bars in Kmix? if i remember correctly PCM was muted on my system by default, i had to set kmix to display it and then raise it's volume. just a general thought, i never tried on os x

The MacPorts install doesn't give me kmix! I tried installing the kdemultimedia4 package through MacPorts, and even though it downloads the "regular" source files, it skips compilation of kmix. Is there a preference file somewhere that I could edit instead of using the kmix gui . . . or is the pref file part of kmix?

in my /home/user/.kde/share/config i see two files of importance for kmix.
kmixrc seems to store config for the Kmix program.
kmixctrlrc contains the actual configuration of sound devices.
i've no idea if you can configure this manually, without Kmix installed. don't know if it would work at all. it's very strange that you can get a sound with phonon. i just tried and on kubuntu if you play the test sound in phonon it is subject to what you do in kmix. if you muted the channel in kmix you can't hear the test sound.

tell me if you want me to paste the code of my kmix configuration files

Sure, I guess it wouldn't hurt to see the contents of the files.

But . . . without kmix installed, I'm not sure if it'll work.

To clarify, I got the test sound to work through the (non-KDE) Qt demo app that MacPorts installed. Apparently, the MacPorts KDE4 packages depend on Qt's implementation of Phonon (using QuickTime backed). So, the Qt+Phonon+QuickTime system seems to be working. It's getting KDE to connect to that system that seems broken.

The KDE3 packages on MacPorts all warn of no sound support. There's no warning like this for KDE4. Am I missing something?

KDE uses Phonon for Audio output, so there should be no problem if Qt applications have a functioning Phonon backend.

Can you please check that KDE uses the Qt installation you were checking with?

How do I check this? Keep in mind that my (standard MacPorts) install doesn't include kmix.

Not sure if this will work on a Mac, but the output of the following please?

Code: Select all

ldd $( which kde4-config ) | grep QtCore
ldd $( which qmake ) | grep QtCore

As stated in Apple Tech Note TN2071, there is no ldd for OS X, but "otool -L" should give the same functionality. So...

Code: Select all

% otool -L $( which kde4-config ) |  grep QtCore
/opt/local/libexec/qt4-mac/lib/QtCore.framework/Versions/4/QtCore (compatibility version 4.6.0, current version 4.6.0)


For qmake, I had to dig because it wasn't in my search path. I found it with locate.

Code: Select all

% otool -L /opt/local/libexec/qt4-mac/bin/qmake | grep QtCore
[NOTHING]

% otool -L /opt/local/libexec/qt4-mac/bin/qmake
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/ApplicationServices (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 22.0.0)
/usr/lib/libstdc++.6.dylib (compatibility version 7.0.0, current version 7.4.0)
/usr/lib/libgcc_s.1.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 88.1.12)


I noticed that Amarok 2 is listed as part of the KDE4 packages on MacPorts, so I figure that sound should work (what would Amarok be without sound!?). I'm trying a fresh MacPorts install of Amarok right now. Incidentally, it's based on Qt 4.6.1 (up from 4.6.0) and KDE 4.3.5 (up from 4.3.4).

I suspect two different versions of Phonon are being used somehow...

Code: Select all

ldd $(which juk) | grep phonon

If the library isn't in /opt/local/libexec/qt4-mac/lib/ then please contact the package maintainer, since it is probably an ABI or version issue.

SOLVED!

The standard install of KDE4 through MacPorts uses Qt's phonon system, which in turn uses the native QuickTime as a backend. As it states at http://mac.kde.org/?id=download , if QuickTime can't play it, phonon can't play it.

The solution is to install the Xiph (ogg) QuickTime component (http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/) to allow QuickTime to play ogg files. Installing Perian (http://perian.org/) wouldn't hurt, either.

There should be a note during the port install process saying that this step is necessary since much of KDE's audio is in ogg format.

Happy KDE-ing!