Sound Card Frustration

[Guest Leben]

Okay, short and sweet, here's the problem.

0.68 InclCM8738

I had an onboard SiS soundcard and a Hercules MuseXL (C-Media) sound card.

 

Well after seeing that my games would play on the SiS card, and my other apps would use the C-Media, I disabled the onboard sound via BIOS before I reformatted/reinstalled MDK.

 

Now, sounds will play as they did, but games can't seem to find the card. For instance with frozen bubble, when lauched from the command line, I see this:

 

[sDL Init] ALSA lib dlmisc.c:97:(snd_dlsym_verify) unable to verify version for symbol snd_config_hook_load

ALSA lib conf.c:2561:(snd_config_hooks_call) symbol snd_config_hook_load is not defined inside (null)

ALSA lib conf.c:2968:(snd_config_update_r) hooks failed, removing configuration

/dev/dsp: Device or resource busy

[Graphics...] [50 levels]

Warning: can't initialize sound (reason: No available audio device)

 

I tried running sndconfig at the request of a friend, but it says my sound card isn't supported. Maybe i'm missing something here, but if it plays sound then somewhere, somehow it's supported :)

 

If anyone has any idea how to fix this, don't hesitate to drop me a line.

 

Thanks in advance.

Leb

[mtweidmann]

I can think of two potential causes:

 

First, did you keep your user settings when you re-installed? (ir your /home directory) It could well be that the games stored whch card to use in the config files they create for each user. In which case they would ry to use a sound card that affecttively isn't there. To check this try creating an entirely new user, and see if you get the same problem.

 

Second, the sound card has already been grabbed by another app/user. This can sometimes happen when running a non-arts app in KDE. Try logging into a different windows manager (eg icewm) and see if it still happens.

[Guest Leben]

First, I formatted all partitions, inluding home, so I doubt anything was left.

 

Second, I tried with GNOME and sound worked fine. Tried with Enlightenment and sound didn't work.

 

I use only those two as examples because I noticed them a while back after I had posted but before anyone replied.

 

Any ideas about which apps could be doing this?

 

Thanks

[mtweidmann]

A couple of windows managers include sound daemons, KDE and Enlightment included. This is fine if your apps take advantage of this, for instance Xmms & Xine both include arts drivers for when you run them in KDE.

 

As far as I know GNOME doesn't have its own sound daemon, and neither do IceWM or Sawfish. So just about any app should work under these. But if you setup an app (eg Xmms) to use the arts driver, then try to use it outside of KDE it won't work!

 

I've found the best solution is to run as many things apps using the arts drivers. Arts only kicks in when you use an app that requires it. So if you haven't used any sound app for a while non-arts apps should still work.

[Guest Leben]

So, I should try to change all programs to use non arts drivers? Any way I can disable it so that all program will work correctly?

[pmpatrick]

You can disable arts in KDE Control Center>Sound>Sound Server. Just uncheck the button "Start aRts soundserver on KDE startup" and click the apply button.