Bugzilla – Bug 674372
RC1: KDE, Pulse, KMix and Alsa don't work very well together
Last modified: 2013-01-25 10:49:14 UTC
User-Agent: Opera/9.80 (X11; Linux i686; U; en) Presto/2.7.62 Version/11.01 Opensuse 11.4 RC1 KDE comes default with Pulseaudio installed, however all the seperate items: KDE/Phonon, Pulseaudio, Kmix and Alsa don't work very well together. - After a clean install one gets the welcome message: "audio playback device HDA Intel [..] does not work, falling back to default." -Checking in kmixer only shows playback devices: internal audio analog stereo, capture devices: internal audio analog stereo, play streams: alsa plugins and event sounds, capture streams: empty. -Checking alsamixer shows the same few channels as kmixer and says card: pulseaudio, chip: PulseAudio. -Yast shows master, pcm, headphone and speaker -Phonon in the KDE personal settings shows HDA intel, default, hw 0,0 and hw 0,1. Also shows speaker setup tab and gstreamer as selected backend. Getting good sound levels, enabling or disabling the microphone, increasing boost etc. etc. all these common things are no longer easy to do and make the whole sound experience a rather bad one compared to the ready to go experience in previous OpenSuse releases. To be honest I am starting to think this might be a error in the list of packages that get installed on a clean install. I checked with my OpenSuse 11.2 install on the same machine and Pulse wise it only has libpulse0 installed and the rest is Alsa. So to test this thought I took a clean 11.4 RC1 KDE install and used Yast2 to remove Pulseaudio (and its 7 dependencies: PulseAudio-utils. PulseAudio-module-zeroconf, PulseAudio-module-x11, PulseAudio-modile-lirc, PulseAudio-jack, PulseAudio-module-bluetooth and alsa-plugins-pulse), libxine1-pulse and libpulse-broswe0. I could not remove libpulse-mailoop-glib0 and libpulse0, but as I said the last one is also on my 11.2 clean install. A reboot later: - No more (error) message that my audio playback device no longer works. - Kmixer shows HDA intel: Master, PCM and headphone but more importantly I can add a lot more like capture, input channels etc. etc. via settings > configure channels. - Alsamixer shows the same as kmixer and says card: HDA Intel, chip: Realtek ALC882. - Yast shows master, pcm, headphone and speaker. - Phonon in the kde personal settings shows HDA intel, default, hw 0,0 and hw 0,1. and gstreamer as selected backend. No speaker selection setup tab. The whole effect is very easly reproducable with a virtualbox, you get the exact same effect as I get with my real machine. So IMHO either those PulseAudio components I removed should no be installed so that the user gets a good (as in previous versions op OpenSuse) sound experience of the whole integration should be improved, to be honest I rather see PulseAudio not installed by default. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Create a virtualbox and select Intel HD Audio as Audio Controller 2. Do a default RC1 KDE install 3. Bootup after the install Actual Results: After you preformed these steps you get the same effects as I written down in the Details section. Expected Results: A user should have a flawless sound install and be able to setup channels just as he wants.
=/ There has been some discussion wether to ship PulseAudio for kde as default or not. The decision fell towards default PulseAudio because that's where upstream is going, you sure have the sympathy of alot of the opensuse-kde team. I for example can't get skype to use my microphone... Feel free to kick PulseAudio off the system, but the decision of 11.4 has been taken and it's too late to suggest a change now
I understand that Pulseaudio seems to be the future if I like it or not :) However as it is right now its a step backwards, as the whole bundle (in RC1) simple does not work together at all. To me a message my audio system is not working and no control over my channels is a bug compared to previous releases. hence this report :)
Well you can play audio and modify all the streams that want to output audio right? So does not work together at all doesn't really fit in this case. And no unless you don't have any idea about how to make the audio stack work together better it's not going to change in 11.4 The message about the audio system not working should only be on first start when you upgraded
You are correct about the message, just checked it again. As for the channels no I can't, I am not able to enable or disable front or back mic, select an input source, change front, surround or center levels of the output, increase the input channels etc. etc. no such options exists in kmix. If they do exist somewhere else I am sorry but I don't see them, if they don't then I stand by my point that it all does not work very well together.
*** Bug 675431 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Pulseaudio wanted to hide this complexity from the user and work magically, your cases didn't came up until 11.4, so as a fix I suggest you to just remove pulseaudio, we will not change anything this big a week before release.
Please let me know if translating this answer correctly: Currently, it is impossible to switch to another capture channel other than the default with PulseAudio. As an example, this would be internal microphone from todays laptops as opposed to the line-in. For all openSUSE 11.4 users with a laptop and internal mic, this will mean they won't be able to use, e.g. skype. Translation correct? I am aware skype is proprietary software but what it's not its fault that it is impossible to switch to another input channel. BTW, it has been possible with 11.3 though it was a little buggy there. It is completely broken now. Isn't this a regression?
no, it's only impossible through kmix atm. Try pavucontrol
will do, thanks :)
*** Bug 675655 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
FWIW, you can disable PA without uninstalling. Run setup-pulseaudio --disable once, re-select phonon backend to xine, then re-login.
*** Bug 679409 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I'm adding the comments from my duplicate bug, because I think they're relevant. The default KDE4 mixer has only very basic features. That is, it cannot access all the channels. Practical example: I have a computer with mainboard GeForce 8200. It outputs video and audio through an HDMI cable to a Full HD Philips TV. By default, after installing 11.4 the audio HDMI channel is muted. There is no way to unmute it (and keep the setting) using the KDE mixer. "Configure channels" shows one one option, "Internal audio"... It cannot be done with pavucontrol either. The only way I could find is by running alsamixer in a terminal window and unmuting the SPDIF1 channel. But this setting is lost after reboot. I had 11.3 on this system until 11.4 was released and there was a way to do this unmuting in KDE. It's important to mention that I have installed and configured pulseaudio on 11.3 and I didn't have the muted SPDIF1 problem. The most annoying part on 11.4 is that it always gets muted again after rebooting. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install 11.4 with KDE 4.6 2. HDMI audio output is muted by default 3. no way to unmute in KDE, have to use alsamixer. This is a usability issue, no discoverability. You cannot click around and resolve the problem. You have to know about alsamixer. Actual Results: No way to unmute HDMI audio output in KDE. Expected Results: Everything should be configurable in KDE, either KMix or in KDE "Configure Desktop/Multimedia" I understand that pulseaudio is the future and I'm all for it but there should be an update of sorts for 11.4 that fixes these problems. Just imagine the level of annoyance for the hypothetical Linux fan that sees every new openSUSE version advance on some fronts and always regress on others. Don't we want to win? With every version comes some breakage in major areas that should just work out-of-the-box with no argument and no exception. With 11.3 there was a black screen during installation because of KMS, with 11.4 there are sound issues.
Found the solution: I can store the sound settings with "alsactl store" as root. The HDMI ouput SPDIF1 is no longer muted after each reboot.
Related bug: After updating from 11.3 to 11.4, flash sound blocked amarok sound and vice versa. I fixed this by executing setup-pulseaudio --enable as root and then reboot. Result: flash and amarok sound output now are working parallel, skype and spdif are working too (as they were before). Expected behaviour: This should have been worked out of the box. My source: http://kayschubert.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/flash-and-pulseaudio-in-opensuse-11-3/
At first: I like pulseaudio! Please keep it as default. I used it before 11.4 and it used to work very well! BUT: Some more Pulseaudio / KMix related Bugs from 11.4: KMix "hides" PLAYBACK and RECORD tabs: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=679185 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=679634 KMix "hides" seperate settings like: Tone, Bass, 3D, PCM, Surround Which settings, seems to depend on the type of sound-hardware. https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=679155 Master volume is low, and becomes low again after every reboot: http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/multimedia/456217-how-save-volume-settings-11-4-a.html https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=661199
On a 64-bit machine with 3 audio outputs: - onboard soundchip; - HDMI on a ATI graphics card; - Creative Labs SB Audigy sound card All 3 where correctly detected, All 3 where listed by Kmix, not muted, volume sliders OK, but: No sound from the Audigy sound card. I have not tried the other 2 outputs. Got it to work, only after: - uninstalling the drivers for the other 2 outputs in Yast; - telling pulseaudio not to used them with pavucontrol (nothing muted there, either, can't remember volume slider settings); I have no problem with pulseaudio (works fine on SLED 11), but I too question the way it is introduced in the KDE version of openSuSE 11.4. This is absolutely below standard!
openSUSE 11.4 is no longer supported. If the probelm still exists with a later version please reopen.