Sound Advice needed - XMMS and GAIM

[rusty]

Hi all,

My son's winblows has hosed it's mouse and no amount of reinstalling will bring it back, thus the boy has been introduced to the linux equivalents. So far so good.

Only catch right now is getting sound for GAIM, preferable while listening to XMMS so he can be alerted when a message arrives.

Hardware is a ASUS A7V266 mobo with intergrated sound

lspci -v lists:

0000:00:05.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01b
0 (rev c2)
        Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc.: Unknown device 0c11
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 5
        Memory at ed800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
        Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce Audio (rev c
2)
        Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc.: Unknown device 8384
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at e100 [size=256]
        I/O ports at e000 [size=128]
        Memory at ed000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

I don't know which drivers I should install, at this point I've removed sndconfig, aumix, and kmix. Any suggestions?

TIA

[mzilikazi]

Interestingly enough I have the same mobo and sound works just fine. Did you use the 'alsa' cheat when you installed? Of course you could just build the alsa drivers against your kernel source. I would recommend reinstalling kmix or aumix as they are mixers and sndconfig is a tool for configuring the sound card. Of course if it didn't help then perhaps it isn't so necessary.

Dunno if sound works on GAIM at the same time as using XMMS because:

a) I have no friends

or

b) I've never used GAIM.

Of course I could install and use GAIM but then I'd be right back to the no friends problem.

[rusty]

I didn't say in my original post, XMMS works fine, it's GAIM that has no sound, either by itself or while XMMS is running. The sounds option is checked in the GAIM setup.

Thanks again.

[mzilikazi]

From the FAQ @ gaim.sf.net:

How do I get sound to work correctly?

Gaim uses libao to play sounds. Playing sounds directly through esound or arts is no longer supported.

" Libao is a cross-platform library that allows programs to output PCM audio data to the native audio devices on a wide variety of platforms. It currently supports OSS (Open Sound System), ESD (ESounD), ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture), Sun audio system (used in Solaris, OpenBSD, and NetBSD), aRts (Analog Realtime Synthesizer). "

To compile Gaim with support for libao you need libao-devel and audiofile-devel. To use libao you need libao and audiofile. If you do not wish to install these packages you can also just change your sound playing method in preferences to Command and use "esdplay %s" or "artsplay %s."

How do I make Gaim use ALSA or OSS for playing sounds? What does the "Automatic" option do?

If you choose "Automatic", "ESD", or "Arts", Gaim uses libao to play sounds. Choosing "ESD" or "Arts" forces libao to play sounds using that method, while choosing "Automatic" lets it decide for itself.

If you choose Automatc, you can create a file, either /etc/libao.conf or ~/.libao, and put one of the following lines in it:

default_driver=alsa
default_driver=oss

You'll be using the ALSA drivers so follow those instructions.

[rusty]

Well, still having problems with this. In a moment of unguided inspiration I wen't into the control center and managed to make xmms the system notification medium. Now kcontrol won't let me change that. Is there a way to manually edit the configuration for kcontrol. I've tried uninstalling (with purge) and reinstalling but to no avail.

Thanks.

[mzilikazi]

Well, still having problems with this. In a moment of unguided inspiration I wen't into the control center and managed to make xmms the system notification medium. Now kcontrol won't let me change that. Is there a way to manually edit the configuration for kcontrol. I've tried uninstalling (with purge) and reinstalling but to no avail.

Thanks.

DOH! I hate it when that happens. Sorry but I'm the last person you'd want to ask anything about KDE aince I don't use it. Maybe it's a good idea to start a new thread w/ a subject directed toward your issue w/ Kcontrol.