[lug] Playing sound on dual opteron with SB Audigy LS

[Michael Hirsch]

At Thursdays meeting towards the end I asked for advice getting sound
on my dual opteron (64 bit) system with a SoundBlaster Audigy LS.  The
symptom is that artsd crashes instantly.  Also, some apps can play
sound, but it often starts playing too quickly, then after a few
seconds slows down to normant.

Many people suggested that I stop being a GUI weenie and try playing
more directly with ALSA (only they were polite about it).  So today I
tried 'aplay' which seemed to work well.  Following up on that, I was
able to configure gstreamer (just by running gst-register) very
easily.  Next I was able to get amarok to use the gstreamer engine. 
So I'm a pretty happy camper.  Thanks.

artsd still crashes instantly, which means that juk won't run either. 
But I can live with amarok.  I'd like to get the rest of my KDE apps
to make noises (like kopete IM notifications--I don't really care
about roller blind sounds when I blind a window), but they seem to
rely on artsd.  So I still have some work to do.

Thanks for everyones suggestions.  They were very helpful.

Michael