XMMS huge delay before playing mp3

**roadrunner** · 07-31-2003, 06:01 PM

system: hdinstalled knoppix 3.2-2003-07-26 on p4 machine w/512M ram, intel 845g chipset sound w/alsa.

no problems with theme sounds (open/close/max window, startup sounds, etc).

trying to play mp3's on hd. clicking on mp3 file immediately brings up the xmms window, and displays and scrolls the mp3 tag info (name, artist, time) but delay's for OVER 1 MINUTE before the music starts playing. If I click on the play button when xmms launches, it seems like xmms freezes as the play button stays depressed and the scrolling stops for the 1 minute+ timeframe.

this is a default install without mod or apt-updates. the output plugin of xmms is OSS 1.2.7 configured for a 1 second buffer.

have not tried other audio formats to see if this also has problem, but my main concern is the mp3's.

any thoughts?

**Stephen** · 07-31-2003, 06:32 PM

One thing you can check for is the arts sound server running in a console window ps xa | grep arts this will return a line with the number of the process it is running under then kill number_of_process this will also come in handy when you click on a mp3 to play if one is already running as XMMS is going to freeze on you (at least it does on my machine ) in this case you would grep for xmms you will see about 6 or 7 lines kill off the first one and re-start XMMS and it will work.

**paradocs** · 08-01-2003, 03:46 AM

Hello roadrunner

I use the comand line mp3 player from a script.
Open the console and type in the command.
See how fast this works:

mpg321 /home/knoppix/yourown.mp3

If the command line player works we
will know it is your XMMS.

Best Wishes
paradocs

**roadrunner** · 08-14-2003, 05:08 PM

hey paradocs and steven, thanks for the suggestions. sorry it took so long to answer back, but have been out of town.

when i use paradocs 'solution' (mpg321) the mp3's do play immediately. NO PROBLEM with the shell - so - i guess the problem is in XMMS. I have tried stevens suggestion - and yes - killing the first process does kill all other xmms tasks, but when i open another mp3, xmms just hangs. the grep returned NOTHING.

looking at the dpkg, there are no updates available to xmms.

tried to configure the OSS driver, but nothing <obvious>.

tried 'configure soundcard' in the knoppix menu, which gave me just an hourglass then the process stopped.

any more thoughts??? Is there another X application that I can test with or use instead of xmms that you are aware of that I can apt-get with limited dependancies? I'm kinda a nb with linux and haven't figured out how to work with application interactions on install yet.

**seth** · 08-17-2003, 10:15 AM

Hi, I have exactly same problems as roudrunner is describing.
In previous releases of knoppix XMMS worked fine (but don't rememeber which was the last working ...). So probably some bug there.

**seth** · 08-17-2003, 04:49 PM

Thanx for tip, really disabling automatical start of aRts in Control Center solved this issue. Now XMMS wokrs fine. But it disabled sound themes within KDE, but who cares

seth

**roadrunner** · 08-26-2003, 04:56 AM

OK - this is getting strange - After giving up on the pc in my office trying to get xmms playing an mp3, I decided to double my pain by hdinstalling on my pc at home on hdb#. Same thing happened ! ! !

Different EVERYTHING - motherboard, cpu, memory, and so on.

Common factors: 1 - used same ISO image (2003-07-26), but different CD's. Ran testcd cheat ('all appears to be ok'), and md5 sum is fine on the iso.

2 - xmms takes over 1 minute to start playing an mp3. I have tried on different mp3's and no difference (see previous post) http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtop...960&highlight=

3 - mpg321 works immediately.

4 - me

thoughts?

**paradocs** · 08-26-2003, 08:10 AM

Hello,

Hummm. Well you have plenty of memoy.

So here is just a guess:
Try messing with buffering etc.

Left corner -->Options-->Preferences-->Configure-->Buffering

or try different --> Output Plugin

But remember what you had so this does not make things worse.

XMMS should work for you but worse case -- write a script
to use mpg321. Actually I am writing a player with
expectk script language to make mpg321 do what I need it to do.

Best Wishes
paradocs

**roadrunner** · 08-26-2003, 01:24 PM

I will 'play' with the buffers, but WTF@!...2 different pc's with default installs? No one else is having this problem?

I used the knx-hdinstall process instead of the new alternative of knoppix-installer if that makes a difference. Both installs are clean (see previous post on grep messages)

Last common element - using alsa sound - but home is via and office is i845 chipset - no soundcard in either. I have an old soundblaster that I might plug in for testing this.

this raises another noob question: since everything is already installed on my hd - if I install new hardware like a sound card, does the startup script detect this as micro-mini-soft does with their pnp environments?

Let you know in a few some of my buffer attempts. Thanks...

**Stephen** · 08-26-2003, 07:13 PM

Originally Posted by roadrunner

I will 'play' with the buffers, but WTF@!...2 different pc's with default installs? No one else is having this problem?

The only problem that I have ever had with XMMS is not it's fault it's the artsd daemon interfering with the output and this has happened on every distribution I have tried.

Last common element - using alsa sound - but home is via and office is i845 chipset - no soundcard in either. I have an old soundblaster that I might plug in for testing this.

XMMS worked fine with alsa also and if you put the soundblaster in you should install sndconfig version .69 not the .70 I have read posts in Debian User that the .70 is broken you will most likley need it to set up the sound configuration.

this raises another noob question: since everything is already installed on my hd - if I install new hardware like a sound card, does the startup script detect this as micro-mini-soft does with their pnp environments?

You should install discover and hwdata to have automatic detection of new hardware.