[ubuntu-uk] Keep losing sound

[Paul Sutton]

David King wrote:
> I keep losing the sound on my Ubuntu 8.04.1 (64-bit) installation. I can 
> play video and audio files okay, but then a bit later I cannot get any 
> sound at all. The only clue is that if I try to open a video file in 
> Xine, it says that the audio is device is unavailable as another program 
> is using it. One time recently when this happened, I close the image 
> viewer which was viewing a jpg image, and then the sound returned (which 
> is bizzare as no sound is needed to view a photo). The image viewer is 
> not currently running, and nothing that uses audio is running (like 
> Rhythmbox), although I have visited some flash-based sites in Firefox.
>
> Any ideas what could cause this and how to prevent the loss of sound in 
> future?
>
> David King
>
>
>   
I have similar issues with 8.10,  one solution i found was to ensure you 
are using alsa,  not the default sound system,  however

sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*

will tell you what applications are using sound

at present i can listen to audio with either vlc or amarok but it does 
keep stopping,

Another idea I found pointed to pulseaudio, but i suspect the other 
answer which points to firefox and flash would also be an issue.

Perhaps this will be fixed in 9.04,  it should be.

seems to be a combination of issues, the problem i am having seems to be 
it will play then stop,  then start up again, almost like its filling a 
cache with data,  playing then stopping while it fills up again, so it 
can carry on playing (if that makes any sense to anyone).

Paul

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Paul Sutton
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