Phonon and non-existant audio devices

[Nigel Henry]

On Thursday 18 September 2008 14:27, Bill Crawford wrote:
> On Monday 15 September 2008 18:17:18 Nigel Henry wrote:
> > hear a click from the speakers. Open Kscd, and now no phonon message, but
> > Kscd still won't play a music cd. Kaffeine still does, but I have
> > problems
>
> Kscd will just start and stop the CD drive, unless you have the correct
> cable from the drive to the soundcard *and* the relevant input turned up in
> the mixer, you won't hear anything and that's nothing to do with Phonon or
> Pulse or anything else; just make sure it's connected up and unmuted. You
> may have to play about with kmix ...

Thanks for the reply Bill. The problem appears to be because I had "direct 
digital playback" checked, and as a consequence of that Kscd said there was 
no disc, like Kscd couldn't see the drive. I found this out by logging in as 
another user, where Kscd had the "direct digital playback" box unchecked, and 
Kscd played the audio cd with no problems.

When I built this machine the dvd combo drive came with no audio, or digital 
cables so I tried the "direct digital playback" option with Kscd. For some of 
the distros installed on this machine, that worked, but for other distros, it 
was a no-go.

Fedora 8 was the first installed, and dd playback didn't work. At the time I 
was having problems installing distros on the machine (acpi problems), so 
ignored the non working Kscd on F8.

Kubuntu Dapper had the same problem, and with dd playback box checked, I get a 
"can't find disk".

Archlinux (Don't Panic) with the dd playback box checked, Kscd plays the audio 
cd's ok.

Kubuntu GG 7.10 is the same as Kubuntu Dapper above.

Debian Etch, with the dd playback box checked, plays audio cd's ok with Kscd.

I eventually found an audio cable for the combo drive, and got Kscd working on 
the above non-working Kscd's, but had forgotten that I'd connected the cable 
when trying Fedora 9's Kscd, which is why it was set for "direct digital 
playback", and for some reason that won't work.

Odd how Kscd will work with direct digital playback enabled on some of the 
distros above, but with others it will only work with an audio cable 
connected on the optical drive, and direct digital playback disabled.

Sorry for the long diatribe.

Nigel.