Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2700 mails)

[Clayton <smaug42@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ok, I've been having a minor sound issue... I've been searching for a
few days now trying to find a solution that works... nothign so far.

OS is SuSE9.3.  I have 2 sound cards... an onboard AC/97 (used for my
VoIP phone), and a Soundblaster Live 24bit (used for my main sound). 
My system is setup to use the Soundblaster for all sound except VoIP
calls.  This works great with one exception...

When I try to play a video using MPlayer, the sound in most videos
(not all, just most) stutters horribly.  MPlayer is usually set to use
OSS as the sound system.  When this works, it works great.  I can play
some AVIs or MPGs just fine.  The sound is perfect.  But, usually the
sound stutters so bad you can't understand anything anymore.

I've done some tinkering, and found that the sound on these videos
works fine if I set MPlayer to use ALSA... except I get the error:

alsa-control: unable to find simple control 'PCM',0

If I'm using the GUI for MPlayer, this means that that error flashes
on the screen about 10 times per second.  You can't watch anything
because windows are flashing like crazy.

If I launch MPlayer in console mode, I get thousands of lines of this
same error.

If I try a simpel amixer command, I get the same error:
--------------------
amixer set PCM on
amixer: Unable to find simple control 'PCM',0
--------------------

So... does anyone have any suggestions how I can either get OSS to
stop stuttering the audio on some videos... or how I can get ALSA to
stop spewing out that error?

C.