Phonon and non-existant audio devices

[Bill Crawford]

On Saturday 20 September 2008 15:16:54 Nigel Henry wrote:

> 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.

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

That sounds like you had more than one drive, and the "wrong" one was ending up 
as the default (or, they looked for "/dev/cdrom" and you had "/dev/dvd" or some 
such)?

> 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.

That also sounds very much like failing to find the correct device to play from 
(or possibly permissions issue, trying to read from the drive).

> 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.

I've had more trouble the other way around; if I have the cable there, it could 
be difficult to work out what channel to adjust the volume on in the mixer. In 
some cases the channel wasn't shown by default, so it was extra confusing...

> Sorry for the long diatribe.

It explained. Not a diatribe ;o)