Ubuntu sound problem after installing Placeshifter

[sashimi]

I installed Placeshifter client on a Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy box. After that I noticed the sound does not work properly with other apps after Placeshift has been run. The sound preference has always been set to "auto detect" drivers. Now after I have run placeshifter, (and exited) often I get a situation where no sound or crackling sounds come out when I play Rhythmbox or some other audio app. Sometimes instead of auto detect if I choose OSS or Pulse Audio drivers the problems would go away temporarily. But they would come back again after some future run of Placeshifter. At times I need to reboot the box.

I also thought Pulse Audio drivers allowed multiple apps to share the audio device instead of one app locking it up. I did not test it before I installed Placeshifter, so can't say for sure.

Any suggestion about what I might be doing wrong ? Rebooting the machine every few times after I have run PS is not an option for me.

thanks

[jimmyO]

Hi Sashimi,

The Ubuntu sound problem is a common and annoying problem it took me quite a long time before i found the solution to it
http://www.fixya.com/support/t850063..._sound_problem

Save the fish, go easy on the sushi :-)
Hope that you are having a good weekend.

[sashimi]

Hi

thanks for the link. I will try it out. Lately I have been noticing sound seems to be working ok when I exit Placeshifter and start up rhythmbox or some other audio app. But mixed audio from two apps running simultaneously does not work. I have not looked into it since from a listening point of view that does not make much sense. When I do switch apps the sound levels somtimes do change quite a bit, but I guess that is app specific thing. I did install a ubuntu package that allows me to control app specific sound level. Had some problem with it where it was not detecting Placeshifter for example. Anyway things seem to be usable for now.

[sashimi]

Wanted to follow up on this issue.

Using an excellent thread on ubuntuforums

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=843012

I am now able to hear audio from multiple apps concurrently. But SageTV still does not seem to co-operate with other apps. When SageTV is launched it seems to take control of ALSA server or something. I dont hear audio from others apps that are launched after SageTV and is played concurrently. I dont know if SageTV uses OSS or ALSA. the README seems to indicate it needs ALSA libs.

Conversely if some other audio app is playing and then I launch SageTV, then SageTV does not seems to produce any audio.

According to the thread, proper use of ALSA plugns should not create this kind of behavior.

May be somebody can throw some light on this. Sometimes I like to keep the TV playing at a low volume in the background with some other audio in foreground. It will be great if I could get this to work.

thanks

[etk29321]

I'm having similar issues with sound in ubuntu. Looking at the miniclient.log file, mplayer appears to fail on sound init:

Sat 9/13 9:30:42.083 stderr:[AO_ALSA] Unable to set format: Invalid argument
Sat 9/13 9:30:42.083 stderr:Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.

Interestingly enough, when I start the mplayer that ships with sage manually at the command line and play the exact same file, sound starts just fine and everything plays great. From the log above, it appears Sage is passing an invalid argument to mplayer....