Description of problem: "knotify4" prevents other programs from accessing the sound until it is killed Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 4.4.2.1.fc12 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Boot computer/login to KDE 2. Startup sound plays 3. Open any media application (including Flash in browser or VLC, etc.) Actual results: sound doesn't work Expected results: sound plays Additional info: $ lsof /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME knotify4 1775 tc mem CHR 116,4 11074 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p knotify4 1775 tc 13u CHR 116,4 0t0 11074 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p The only way I've found to get sound back is to kill the "knotify4" process, which works until another notification is triggered, at which point I must kill it again.
I depends on a lot of things, mostly I take it you're not using pulseaudio? Then, it may depend on which phonon backend you're using.
Basically, concurrent access to sound devices only works with PulseAudio, that's what it is for! If you want to use dmix, you have to set that up manually, it is no longer set up automatically in Fedora because it has been replaced by PulseAudio.
And re dmix, see also bug 474259. (This might be a duplicate of that bug.)
I'm using the default gstreamer backend. Would switching it to xine help? I don't know what dmix is, and since you say it requires manual setup I'm assuming I'm not using it. When PulseAudio is installed sound doesn't work at all on my computer, and KDE complains about default device problems at every login. (Something that depended on it reinstalled it yesterday and I got some error messages out of VLC that might be useful in that regard. I'll reinstall it later to see if I can figure that one out.) Another strange problem that might be related is that I get no sound or video out of Juk or Dragon Player; I've had to use VLC. At any rate, shouldn't knotify4 only lock the sound device when it's actually producing a sound? The low battery warning and adapter plug/unplug sounds do work while sound is playing from VLC. In fact, right now both processes are sharing /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p just fine: $ lsof /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME knotify4 2470 tc mem CHR 116,4 11948 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p knotify4 2470 tc 15u CHR 116,4 0t0 11948 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p vlc 2471 tc mem CHR 116,4 11948 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p vlc 2471 tc 15u CHR 116,4 0t0 11948 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p Only when I login and infrequently during the course of use do I have to kill knotify4 to get sound out of anything.
The default is Xine, not GStreamer. But I think it doesn't really matter here which you're using. So you disabled PulseAudio and you didn't enable dmix (because you don't even know what it is)? Then of course only one device can access the audio device at a time. This is working exactly as designed, sorry.