no audio playback from the blender sequencer.

[Bassam Kurdali]

Binary package hint: blender

playing back animation in blender results in the message:
"Couldn't open audio: No available audio device" on the console and no audio. some information:

*reproduce this bug by hitting alt-a in blender to playback animation, with the sync option enabled.

*blender audio uses SDL, and seems to be OSS only. on other OS's (gentoo, redhat) blender hogs non-mixing soundcards while playing sound, no other apps get audio.

*blender audio works in ubuntu *if* you have a soundcard with hardware mixing, aka emu10k1 cards.

*no audio even when I kill esd, kill gdm, and start X with just openbox running.

*I am aware that you need to disable game engine sound in blender to get sequencer sound ( heh )

*this problem has cropped up on various systems using different hardware, the common element is that they were ubuntu linux, and the sound card didn't hardware mix- we fixed it on our desktops by getting cards with hardware mixing.

[Bassam Kurdali (slikdigit)]

oh one more thing: bug appears in both packaged blender versions, and self-compiled cvs checkouts. Noone in the blender community has been able to help me so far.

[Bassam Kurdali (slikdigit)]

what worked for me was to install libsdl1.2debian-all
and to start blender by typing
export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=esd && bl -g noaudio

now I have sequencer sound in blender.
sorry for the bother! please close the bug - I had really thought all options were exhausted when I posted it.

[Patrice Vetsel (vetsel-patrice)]

do you have tested in a fresh install ?!
Please provide an project file and steps to reproduce your bug.

[Bassam Kurdali (slikdigit)]

I have a fresh install from about a month ago. Please note we had the same problem in the past with different hardware under breezy; at that time we had desktops, and we simply installed sound cards that supported hardware mixing under linux.

Also note, that the problem is fixed for me now, by following the steps in my above comment. nevertheless, I attach a sample blend file, with a sample sound.

please note you will have to delete and re-add the sound strip (select by right clicking , delete to delete, then shift-A audio-RAM and browse to the wave file). this is because blender soundblocks always use absolute paths to point to a wav file (even if the sequencer strip shows relative paths), so the sound block points to the wave file in my home directory. (Annoying bug in blender)
I don't know if I can attach a file here, so I'll link it from my site..
http://www.freefactory.org/misc/sounds.tar.gz

also note: at least in the case where your sound card supports hardware mixing, blender sound will work, and will not block/be blocked by sound from other applications out of the box. In my case, sound in blender blocks/is blocked by sound from other apps, which is the best I've gotten in blender on this hardware (cheap laptop sound- I believe an intel sound chipset) and any distribution.
sorry for the longwinded comment

[bartje (bart-deruyter)]

I had to compile Blender 2.43 from cvs to get working sound.

The above mentioned techniques did not work for me, on builds I had downloaded from the website of Blender.

Now I do have sound, but I still had to disable gamesound to have sound from the sequencer, which I did not have to do in 2.42. Perhaps this also is something to look at.

[Yuriy Kozlov (yuriy-kozlov)]

I just ran into this problem on Feisty with blender 2.43. The workaround above worked for me, though I changed it a little:
I did not install libsdl1.2debian-all because libsdl1.2debian-alsa was already installed, and I ran
export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa && blender -g noaudio

Unless I'm missing something, since Ubuntu uses alsa, I think the environmental variable should be set by default.

[Yuriy Kozlov (yuriy-kozlov)]

Leaving game sound enabled (omitting the -g noaudio option) works too. However, in either case, the sound is staticy.

[Aldrik (aldrik)]

This is the only way I could get audio working properly in blender on my system...
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=84887

[Nathaniel B. Jayme (nbjayme)]

The solution is to place the variable in /etc/environment

   # sudo nano /etc/environment

   place SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa

   restart the computer and launch blender

   worked well on my Fiesty Fawn Ubuntu

[oxigen (krizanovskij)]

I had no problems with sound in Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron after installation, but since they 'fixed' problem with Firefox and Flash player I can't hear sound in Blender any more :(

Anyone know how to fix this issue?

[CTOBIAS (ctobias01)]

The solution for me on Ubuntu 8.04 x64:

Remove or rename ".asoundrc" and ".asoundrc.asoundconf" hiden files on your "Home" directory and restart Ubuntu, i have installed "libsdl1.2debian-all".

[RussTV (srn-russtv)]

Ubuntu 8.04.1 hardy i686

installed Blender from ubuntu repositories by apt-get

solution was:

~$ export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa
~$ blender -g nosound

After that I can play sound in VSE

[Festor (festor-deactivatedaccount)]

Still happen in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty?

[Nick Alderweireldt (nick-alderweireldt)]

Yes. I have done a fresh install. No sound with blender from the repos. The suggestions above did not work.

[Nick Alderweireldt (nick-alderweireldt)]

Problem is solved in jaunty. This is what I did.
Add SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa to /etc/environment
Disable pulseaudio (delete packages)
Download blender from the blender site
Start blender from the blender folder with ./blender -g noaudio.
I also compiled ffmpeg and x264 from svn.

I am not sure that this is all necessary. I did not test blender after each step. (sorry for that)

[Nicola Jelmorini (jelmorini)]

I have just upgraded from Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04 and the audio from Blender 2.48a Sequencer is only a bunch of noise using the package from the repository. Instead using the version downloaded from http://www.blender.org still function very well, even using pulseaudio.

Here I can show you the messages in the terminal displayed by the "blender.org" (the functioning one) version when I play an mp3 file:

################ BLENDER.ORG #########################################
nicola@nicola-laptop:~$ export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=pulse && /home/nicola/Pubblici/blender-2.48/blender
Compiled with Python version 2.5.4.
Checking for installed Python... got it!
X Display: :0.0
Magellan App Window: 0x4800002
Command Event Atom=0
Motion Event Atom=0
Btn Press Event Atom=0
Btn Release Event Atom=0
No 3Dconnexion driver is running.
Input #0, mp3, from '/home/nicola/Musica/Non_classificata/Festivalbar_2008_Rossa/05-duffy-mercy.mp3':
  Duration: 00:03:34.2, bitrate: 192 kb/s
  Stream #0.0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, 192 kb/s
mdb:68, lastbuf:0 skipping granule 0
mdb:68, lastbuf:0 skipping granule 0
mdb:68, lastbuf:0 skipping granule 1
mdb:68, lastbuf:0 skipping granule 1
mdb:136, lastbuf:68 skipping granule 0
mdb:136, lastbuf:68 skipping granule 0
mdb:136, lastbuf:68 skipping granule 1
mdb:136, lastbuf:68 skipping granule 1
mdb:204, lastbuf:136 skipping granule 0
mdb:204, lastbuf:136 skipping granule 0
mdb:204, lastbuf:136 skipping granule 1
mdb:204, lastbuf:136 skipping granule 1
mdb:272, lastbuf:204 skipping granule 0
mdb:272, lastbuf:204 skipping granule 0
mdb:272, lastbuf:204 skipping granule 1
mdb:272, lastbuf:204 skipping granule 1
mdb:340, lastbuf:272 skipping granule 0
mdb:340, lastbuf:272 skipping granule 0
mdb:340, lastbuf:272 skipping granule 1
mdb:340, lastbuf:272 skipping granule 1
mdb:408, lastbuf:340 skipping granule 0
mdb:408, lastbuf:340 skipping granule 0
mdb:408, lastbuf:340 skipping granule 1
mdb:408, lastbuf:340 skipping granule 1
mdb:476, lastbuf:408 skipping granule 0
mdb:476, lastbuf:408 skipping granule 0
mdb:476, lastbuf:408 skipping granule 1
mdb:476, lastbuf:408 skipping granule 1
mdb:511, lastbuf:476 skipping granule 0
mdb:511, lastbuf:476 skipping granule 0
mdb:511, lastbuf:476 skipping granule 1
mdb:511, lastbuf:476 skipping granule 1
mdb:30, lastbuf:0 skipping granule 0
Saved session recovery to /tmp/quit.blend

Blender quit
nicola@nicola-laptop:~$
################ BLENDER.ORG #########################################

Here I can show you the messages in the terminal displayed by the "Ubuntu blender package" version when I play an mp3 file:

################ UBUNTU BLENDER PACKAGE ################################
nicola@nicola-laptop:~$ export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=pulse && blender
Compiled with Python version 2.6.2.
Checking for installed Python... got it!
X Display: :0.0
Magellan App Window: 0x4600002
Command Event Atom=0
Motion Event Atom=0
Btn Press Event Atom=0
Btn Release Event Atom=0
No 3Dconnexion driver is running.
Input #0, mp3, from '/home/nicola/Musica/Non_classificata/Festivalbar_2008_Rossa/05-duffy-mercy.mp3':
  Duration: 00:03:41.77, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 185 kb/s
    Stream #0.0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16...

[Nazo (lovesyao)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running only once:
apport-collect <bug #>

and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[Nazo (lovesyao)]

Note: IIRC current blender uses OpenAL by default instead of SDL audio.

[Nicola Jelmorini (jelmorini)]

In fact for me it's ok now. This bug can be closed.
I'm using Blender in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64bit.