On 29-06-2012 21:50, David C. Rankin wrote:

Guys,

I've been through the wiki, but this weird skype error occurs when attempting to make a voip voice call. The defaults set in skype "Sound Services" were:

Microphone: Default device (default) Speakers: Intel ICH6, Intel ICH6 - IEC958 (hw:0,4) Ringing: Intel ICH6, Intel ICH6 - IEC958 (hw:0,4)

However pressing "Make a test sound" - there is NO sound. I can place a call, but there is no ringing audio, etc.

If I change the config to:

Microphone: Default device (default) Speakers: pulse (pulse) Ringing: pulse (pulse)

Pressing "Make a test sound" -- works! But, attempting to make a call, I get an immediate "Problem with Audio Playback" and the call closes.

I have set ~/.pulse/client.conf to "autospawn = no" and it make no difference. Any ideas?

Most probably something else is grabbing either the playback or the capture device, at least I have only seen that error when that's the case. If you don't want pulse to "manage" your sound devices you should look into setting up an asound.conf with explicit entries for dmix and dsnoop to avoid one program hogging the sound device. That said, the latest skype has been working just fine here with xfce+pulse. -- Mauro Santos

On 30-06-2012 06:49, David C. Rankin wrote:

On 06/29/2012 04:46 PM, Mauro Santos wrote:

...

Most probably something else is grabbing either the playback or the capture device, at least I have only seen that error when that's the case. If you don't want pulse to "manage" your sound devices you should look into setting up an asound.conf with explicit entries for dmix and dsnoop to avoid one program hogging the sound device.

That said, the latest skype has been working just fine here with xfce+pulse.

I suspect there is a soundcard fight going on. Incoming calls work with:

Speakers: Intel ICH6, Intel ICH6 - IEC958 (hw:0,4) Ringing: Intel ICH6, Intel ICH6 - IEC958 (hw:0,4)

It's just the dialout that is messed up. I have also noticed that with pulse/Intel configs I get a delay when testing skype sound (push test button and 10 seconds later the audio file plays).

To test, I fired up gnome (stuck in fallback with my Nvidia 8800 - sigh), but skype sound worked fine.

I have no beef with pulse, alsa, whatever as long as it works. Since this is my first time messing with skype -- I'm just happy to identify the issue.

Kudos to the folks who put the skype wiki together. Setting up a separate user to run skype with and preventing it from snooping is just plain smart. Simple solution, well written up.

Thanks for your help and explanation!

I'd say that you should try to use what you are using for everything else, and you should make that explicit. You mention running skype with another user, as a start I would run it as your user, if I'm not wrong these days access to the sound devices is granted dynamically by consolekit (or whatever *kit) based on the current active session. The alternate user for skype might not register as having an active session thus causing some problem. You should also state which DE you are planning to use as some other users may have stumbled upon similar a problem. My experience is with XFCE and mostly with pulse, I have also done a short stint with only alsa so I don't have as much experience with that. -- Mauro Santos