Comment 60 for bug 68187

This bug affected me too. I tried all the solutions mentioned, including installing the extra xinelibs. I don't know if it is a bug with pulseaudio as I didn't seem to have pulseaudio installed and was still experiencing the error. I installed pulseaudio and started it, to see if it would help, and got the following error:

$ pulseaudio &
[1] 9456
$ W: ltdl-bind-now.c: Failed to find original dlopen loader.
W: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_NICE, (31, 31)) failed: Operation not permitted
W: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_RTPRIO, (9, 9)) failed: Operation not permitted
E: alsa-util.c: Error opening PCM device hw:0: Device or resource busy
E: module.c: Failed to load module "module-alsa-sink" (argument: "device_id=0 sink_name=alsa_output.pci_10de_55c_sound_card_0_alsa_playback_0"): initialization failed.
ALSA lib control.c:909:(snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL front:0

Although pulseaudio was started. Opening Amarok at this stage, it did not display the error, but cascaded through the playlist on an infinite loop, not playing any of the tracks and had to be killed using killall.

In that error it says Device or resource busy. Is there any way to find which process is making it "busy"? Closing Firefox as suggested did not help.

I even tried
sudo dpkg-reconfigure amarok-engine-xine
thinking it might help, but no joy.

So far my only solution to this error is to restart the computer, no matter whether I have pulseaudio or not.

I am running Kubuntu 8.10 (although it occurred in 8.04 for me too)
"Amarok 1.4.10 (using KDE 3.5.10)" -- although the actual desktop is KDE 4.1
libxine things are 1.1.15
Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP67 High Definition Audio (rev a1)

I noticed Timo Stoll said he was using the nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio. Any chance this is only affecting nVidia chipsets? (Clutching at straws now, I know)