system sounds do not play

[Alex Mauer]

When using gnome-sound-properties, the "Play" buttons next to the system sounds on the "Sounds" tab produce no sound. In addition, system login and -out sounds are not played.

All "sound playback" tests produce a test tone.

[Alex Mauer (hawke)]

(on gutsy here)

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

I can hear the system sounds it was this bug 139144 feel free to comment on that one.

The system startup and logout sounds is a known bug and the number is bug 129029 , marking this report as dup of that one for now, thanks you!.

[Alex Mauer (hawke)]

bug 139144 states specifically, "I can hear perfectly sounds in gnome sound preferences" which is not the case for me in this bug. bug 129029 says that it's working fine there too. For me they do *not* work when clicking "Play" on the "sounds" tab in gnome-sound-properties.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

That works for me, not confirming.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

That works correctly on my gutsy, do you have any error if you run the gnome-sound-properties capplet from a command line?

[Alex Mauer (hawke)]

Yes, though I'm not sure if it's an error or a warning.

$ gnome-sound-properties
/bin/sh: /usr/bin/esd: not found

installing esound makes the message go away, but doesn't allow the play buttons to work.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The warning is normal, it's printed when esd is not installed in which case aplay is used. Does "aplay /usr/share/sounds/startup.wav" play some sound?

[Alex Mauer (hawke)]

No. It reports:

$ aplay /usr/share/sounds/startup.wav
ALSA lib pcm.c:2105:(snd_pcm_open_conf) Cannot open shared library /usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_pulse.so
aplay: main:545: audio open error: No such file or directory

After installing the libasound2-plugins package which provides that file, it reports:

$ aplay /usr/share/sounds/startup.wav
*** PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused
aplay: main:545: audio open error: Connection refused

After installing and launching pulseaudio (and killing rhythmbox which was holding /dev/dsp open) aplay works and the g-s-p "play" buttons work properly.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Looks like an alsa bug, reassigning

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

can you attach your ~/.asoundrc.asoundconf ?

[Kevin McDonald (spookcomix)]

I'm having a similar issue. I found this bug after looking through the forums, and it seems my problem could be related.

My problem started when I installed Monkey Bubble and had no sound in the game. This turned out to be a common problem. After following some advice in an UbuntuForums thread to install "pulseaudio." I still couldn't get sound from Monkey Bubble, but nothing else other than Amarok that I tested produced sound.

I uninstalled "pulseaudio" and the one or two other packages it had brought with it, including "pulseaudio-esound-compat". Now I get no system sounds, no game sounds...the only thing that seems to produce sound is Amarok.

When I run "frozen-bubble" from a command line, part of the error is the same as one above:

[SDL Init] ALSA lib pcm.c:2105:(snd_pcm_open_conf) Cannot open shared library /usr/lib/alsa-lib/libasound_module_pcm_pulse.so
[Graphics............]
Warning: can't initialize sound (reason: No available audio device).

After removing and reinstalling alsa-base (and dependent packages), the error message stayed the same. Seeing "pulse" in the missing module made me wonder if I should now try reinstalling "pulseaudio". After doing so, the frozen-bubble error message changed to:

[SDL Init] *** PULSEAUDIO: Unable to connect: Connection refused
[Graphics............]

Is it worse? Is it related? I don't know, but I thought I'd attempt to contribute.

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

It looks like the problem is the asoundrc.asoundconf file. What happens if you comment out, or remove the last two lines of that file? I would expect sound to work again.

[GregorS (gregor-skrt-email)]

Same problem here. I tried to use sounds from gnome-look. Sound for login and logout doasn't work any more and button in gnome-sound-properties works only once. If I try to press that button again I don't get any sounds any more. There was the same problem in Gutsy I use Hardy now.

 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a1)

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

(This symptom is worked around in the latest alsa-lib for intrepid.)

[dmsuperman (dmsuperman)]

I can confirm. Pulseaudio is disabled, and my login sounds don't work. I can't hit "play" in gnome-sound-properties. Nothing is send to stdout, but nothing is played. aplay /usr/share/sounds/startup.wav works, no errors, and plays the sound, but I don't hear it when I log in. Sound works in literally everything else.

[dmsuperman (dmsuperman)]

Sorry, just like to add the quick half-second drumroll you get when you first come to the login screen plays, only the sound that plays when you login doesn't work.

[Luke Yelavich (themuso)]

If you are running Ubuntu hardy or earlier, if esd/pulseaudio are not running, you don't hear any event sounds. Unfortunately thats a limitation of the GNOME sound architecture for Ubuntu hardy and earlier.