C[omp]ute

From: andrew cooke <andrew@...>

Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2012 22:01:13 -0300

OpenSuse 12.2 and KDE sound (Phonon) seem to be seriously broken.  With 12.1 I
could plug-and-play with USB.  With 12.2 nothing is working as expected.

After a lot of playing around (including compiling custom kernels) I think
I've isolated the issue to the Phonon plug-and-play support.  So here's the
workaround:

  - Connect all USB sound devices and reboot.

  - Configure each device in YAST (hardware/sound).  I think this creates ALSA
    devices.

  - Possibly, mess around with Phonon priority (system settings / multimedia /
    phonon).  I am not sure this is necessary, but it may be that Phonon tries
    to re-arrange priorities before things hit the lower level ALSA.

  - Use Amarok to play music to the highest priority device.

This fixes:

  - Clicks with AudioEngine D1

  - No streaming at all with Music Fidelity V-Link (Mk1)

Incidentally, the folks at AudioEngine were very supportive with the Linux
issues (they didn't have a fix, but they appear to be using Linux themselves
and have tested a bunch of different distros/kernels).

Andrew