Common problems

• No sound
  There are many causes for this one:
  • You don't have write access to the audio device. This often happens for people that create a new user to test KDE4 and forget to put him into the audio group, or whatever is required on your distribution.
  • Incorrect default ordering of the audio devices. Phonon tries to detect which device is S/PDIF or USB or Modem or whatever and order/hide the devices as needed. But as the information is sometimes missing Phonon cannot always determine the type of device correctly. Take a look at Getting Involved to see how to fix this.
  • Missing device entries. This is caused by ALSA/HAL/Solid reporting the exact same name for different devices. This ambiguity results in only one of the devices getting shown. Take a look at Getting Involved to see how to fix this.
• Phonon plays to the wrong device. This is related to the above problem, but if you think the default setting is correct, you just want to change it for your system then open the KDE 4 System Settings and click on the Sound icon. In there you have the possibility to define a preference for devices for different categories of applications. E.g. to change the output device for JuK or Amarok you'd click on the Music category and then move the devices around such that the most preferred device is on top of the list. If this device should fail for some reason (e.g. an unplugged USB device) Phonon will fall back to the next device in the list.
• Phonon causes a crash. Yes, there are still bugs in there. Some people have reported the xine PulseAudio output to crash, so you might want to try to (re)move xine's PulseAudio plugin. You can find it in /usr/lib/xine/plugins//xineplug_ao_out_pulseaudio.so. If it still crashes install all the debug packages (especially for xinelib) for your distri and get a backtrace by attaching gdb with "gdb " and then type "thread apply all bt" at the gdb prompt. Report the bug at bugs.kde.org.
• Devices from /etc/asound.conf or ~/.asoundrc are not listed. Phonon uses a function introduced in alsa-libs 1.0.14 to find those devices. To make this function list your entry you need to add a name hint. E.g.

      hint {
          show on
          description "Name to display for the device"
      }
  

  A complete example that adds a new volume control named Phonon to your mixer:

  pcm.softvolPhonon {
      type softvol
      slave.pcm "default:CARD=0"
      control {
          name "Phonon"
          card 0
      }
      min_dB -51.0
      max_dB 0.0
      resolution 100
      hint {
          show on
          description "My Soundcard with extra Volume Control"
      }
  }