Unable to play streaming music...

Please see results of starting sl in the terminal (o-suse 11.1)

This is the only pasting service I know - sorry:-

http://paste.ubuntu.com/206212/

Gratefull for any tips you can give. (Not a huge lot of background knowledge here.)

Sure I have been all over the forum and read loads of google stuff - all to no avail.

Is it just streaming music you cant play or do you have no sound in SL in general? Cause the log you pasted says, your soundsystem got initialized successfully, with openal 1.1 using Alsa.
My guess is thats its a gstreamer modules fault. Either theres one missing or not quite compatible with how SL wants to use gstreamer.
It would be interesting to see what the log says when you try to enable an audiostream.

- Asriazh

You are apparently running a 32-bit Linux install, which is good, because Second Life does not work with 64-bit gstreamer installations at all.

I can't tell whether or not gstreamer initialized when you launched your viewer, so I don't know if you have it installed at all. Be sure you have gstreamer0.10 installed, along with the good and ugly plugins.

Also, be sure the volume slider for streaming music on the volume control in your viewer is not turned all the way down or muted.

Finally, if nothing else seems to work, then you may need to force the viewer to use the FMOD library instead of gstreamer.

If the playback button doesn't work, you might check Preferences (Ctrl-P), tab Audio & Video whether Play Streaming Music When Available (uses more bandwidth) is enabled.

Same problem here, but a bit more info, perhaps.

I started with SL on ubuntu 9.04, and the streaming sound was perfectly OK. For a number of non-SL reasons I had to revert to ubuntu 8.04, which I reinstalled from scratch on a wiped disk. I can now only hear ambient sounds and voice chat from within SL itself. If, however, I copy the Music URL from 'World'/'about Land' into Rhythmbox as a new radio station, I can hear it perfectly ...
I've checked that 'gstreamer' is installed, along with the 'good', 'bad' and 'ugly' plug-ins, and that the 'Preferences' are set correctly. I've tried altering the settings in Ubuntu's 'System/Preferences/Sound' dialog, but it makes no difference to SL (or Skype, for that matter). I've also tried installing the OSS-ALSA wrapper, but that didn't make any difference, either.

I'd be tearing my hair out, if I had any left...

Bob Unitt

Can you try to run the following in a terminal?

gst-launch-0.10 playbin uri=$MUSIC_URL
where $MUSIC_URL is that Music URL from 'World'/'about Land'

see if ur group is loaded on the land and also check synaptic to see if u have any removed libs hanging around.i had 2 libs something removed and when i reinstalled them the radio worked.the sim might have restarted also because my group is loaded now too. idk just something to check.

Here we go ;-

me@main-desktop:~$ gst-launch-0.10 playbin uri=http://{URL}:80/stream/1048
Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Pipeline is PREROLLING ...
Pipeline is PREROLLED ...
Setting pipeline to PLAYING ...
New clock: GstAudioSinkClock

{left running for a couple of minutes - monitor showed it was downloading something at about 15kbps, but no sound on speakers - then hit Ctrl-C}

Caught interrupt -- handling interrupt.
Interrupt: Stopping pipeline ...
Execution ended after 89315078825 ns.
Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Setting pipeline to READY ...
Setting pipeline to NULL ...
me@main-desktop:~$

The same stream played on RhythmBox without problem.

Bob

Gentlefolk,

Another victory for the 'stab blindly in the dark until something breaks' school of debugging !

I edited the secondlife script to remove the comment prefix from the line "export LL_BAD_OPENAL_DRIVER=x" and my streaming sound is now working OK in most places

I have _absolutely_ no idea why...

Bob

Very strange. Normally, this is where I would point out that your gstreamer output may be misconfigured (something that can be checked by typing gstreamer-properties in terminal); but you mentioned that it plays fine in Rhythmbox - which also uses gstreamer... Of course, the command didn't throw any errors, either, so maybe this is a Pulseaudio problem... But even that doesn't make any sense, since Rhythmbox works...

Maybe typing gst-launch-0.10 -v playbin uri=http://{URL}:80/stream/1048 (note the -v) might reveal the problem.

Thanks for your help.



'gstreamer-properties' output :-

gstreamer-properties-Message: Skipping unavailable plugin 'artsdsink'
gstreamer-properties-Message: Skipping unavailable plugin 'v4lmjpegsrc'
gstreamer-properties-Message: Skipping unavailable plugin 'qcamsrc'
gstreamer-properties-Message: Skipping unavailable plugin 'esdmon'

'Multimedia System Selector' dialog box appeared, containing :-
Default Output
Plugin: ALSA - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
Device: Default
Pipeline: alsasink



The music played OK when I did this, here's the output (note that the URL has changed a little) :-

me@main-desktop:~$ gst-launch-0.10 -v playbin uri=http://{URL}:8010/
Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
/playbin0/source: iradio-genre = "Chill Out, Lounge, Ambient"
/playbin0/source: iradio-name = "1.FM - The Chillout Lounge"
/playbin0/source: iradio-url = "http://{URL2}"
Pipeline is PREROLLING ...
/playbin0/source.src: caps = application/x-icy, metadata-interval=(int)8192
/playbin0/decodebin0/typefind.src: caps = application/x-icy, metadata-interval=(int)8192
/playbin0/decodebin0/typefind.sink: caps = application/x-icy, metadata-interval=(int)8192
/playbin0/decodebin0.sink: caps = application/x-icy, metadata-interval=(int)8192
/playbin0/decodebin0.sink: caps = application/x-icy, metadata-interval=(int)8192
/playbin0/decodebin0.sink.proxypad0: caps = application/x-icy, metadata-interval=(int)8192
/playbin0/decodebin0/icydemux0.sink: caps = application/x-icy, metadata-interval=(int)8192
/playbin0/decodebin0/mpegaudioparse0.sink: caps = audio/mpeg, mpegversion=(int)1, layer=(int)3
/playbin0/selector_audio_src0: active-pad = NULL
/playbin0/preroll_audio_src0: min-threshold-time = 2850000000
/playbin0/decodebin0/mpegaudioparse0.src: caps = audio/mpeg, mpegversion=(int)1, layer=(int)3, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2, parsed=(boolean)true
/playbin0/decodebin0/flump3dec0.sink: caps = audio/mpeg, mpegversion=(int)1, layer=(int)3, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2, parsed=(boolean)true
/playbin0/decodebin0/flump3dec0.src: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/selector_audio_src0.sink0: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/decodebin0.src0: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/decodebin0.src0.proxypad1: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/selector_audio_src0.src: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/preroll_audio_src0.sink: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/preroll_audio_src0: min-threshold-time = 900000000
Pipeline is PREROLLED ...
/playbin0/preroll_audio_src0.src: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
Setting pipeline to PLAYING ...
/playbin0/abin/aconv.src: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/abin/aconv.sink: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/abin.sink: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/abin.sink: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/abin.sink.proxypad3: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/abin/aresample.src: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/abin/aresample.sink: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/abin/volume.src: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/abin/volume.sink: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/abin/audiosink/audiosink-actual-sink-alsa.sink: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/abin/audiosink.sink: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/abin/audiosink.sink: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
/playbin0/abin/audiosink.sink.proxypad2: caps = audio/x-raw-int, endianness=(int)1234, signed=(boolean)true, width=(int)16, depth=(int)16, rate=(int)44100, channels=(int)2
New clock: GstAudioSinkClock
{CTRL-C input here}
Caught interrupt -- handling interrupt.
Interrupt: Stopping pipeline ...
Execution ended after 21765569328 ns.
Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Setting pipeline to READY ...
/playbin0/abin/audiosink/audiosink-actual-sink-alsa.sink: caps = NULL
/playbin0/abin/audiosink.sink: caps = NULL
/playbin0/abin/volume.src: caps = NULL
/playbin0/abin/volume.sink: caps = NULL
/playbin0/abin/aresample.src: caps = NULL
/playbin0/abin/aresample.sink: caps = NULL
/playbin0/abin/aconv.src: caps = NULL
/playbin0/abin/aconv.sink: caps = NULL
/playbin0/abin.sink: caps = NULL
/playbin0/preroll_audio_src0.src: caps = NULL
/playbin0/preroll_audio_src0.sink: caps = NULL
/playbin0/selector_audio_src0.sink0: caps = NULL
/playbin0/selector_audio_src0.src: caps = NULL
/playbin0/decodebin0.src0: caps = NULL
/playbin0/decodebin0/flump3dec0.src: caps = NULL
/playbin0/decodebin0/flump3dec0.sink: caps = NULL
/playbin0/decodebin0/mpegaudioparse0.src: caps = NULL
/playbin0/decodebin0/mpegaudioparse0.sink: caps = NULL
/playbin0/decodebin0/icydemux0.src: caps = NULL
/playbin0/decodebin0/icydemux0.sink: caps = NULL
/playbin0/decodebin0/typefind.src: caps = NULL
/playbin0/decodebin0/typefind.sink: caps = NULL
/playbin0/decodebin0.sink: caps = NULL
/playbin0/source.src: caps = NULL
Setting pipeline to NULL ...
FREEING pipeline ...
me@main-desktop:~$

--
Bob

But it didn't without the -v?

Maybe the problem is specific the the stream in your previous try? According to the output, this last one was an mp3 stream. Do you know what format the previous one was?

Sorry, I was unclear - yes it did work with both.


Also an MP3 - and it's not just one stream, it's _any_ stream.

It works most of the time now, BUT - after a few hours (SL is addictive...) the music sometimes stops. When that happens and I close SL, the Gnome Panels on my screen are dead, and I have hit the cpu-reset and do a reboot to get it all back again.

Curiouser and curiouser...

Bob

Additional information:-

On leaving second life a few minutes ago the system was extremely slow. I found that the ESD process was still taking 100% CPU after SL has closed - isn't ESD part of the sound system used by SL ? Once I'd terminated ESD from the System Monitor all was well. I had a look at the Secondlife.log file, and found a couple of lines towards the end which may be relevant :-

2009-07-23T15:27:37Z WARNING: cleanup: Hack, skipping FMOD audio engine cleanup
2009-07-23T15:27:38Z WARNING: cleanup: Quitting with pending background tasks

Is this because there's outstanding work still to be done on the Beta Linux client ?

Bob

You shouldn't be running ESD - at all!

Your gstreamer-properties output indicates you have audio set to use ALSA - but, I'll bet you're actually running Pulseaudio. Pulseaudio 0.9.10, most likely, the version that ships with Hardy Heron.

Your "stream eventually dies and everything becomes sluggish" problem sounds like Pulseaudio is crashing -- and any process using Pulseaudio generally wigs out when that happens. This is a very well-known issue, with a cure and two workarounds, depending on how deeply involved you want to get with Linux's innards:

Cure: Upgrade Pulseaudio to 0.9.14. This also requires upgrading ALSA. This is easier said than done, but not impossible. Do a search for Pulseaudio 0.9.14 PPAs in Launchpad and find one relevant to Hardy. This will cure your problem completely, though you may need to tweak your /etc/pulse/daemon.conf file.

Workaround #1: Remove Pulseaudio and stick with ALSA. Be sure you have amixer installed so you can play sounds from more than one source; otherwise you'll likely find your systemwide audio experience rather unsatisfying.

Workaround #2: This requires no messing around with alternate PPAs or config files - except one. This is a good quick-fix, but you will have to sacrifice voice capability in SL. To use this workaround, simply disable voice in your viewer, and edit the secondlife startup script (the script you launch to start the viewer) as follows:In essence, you want to disable OpenAL, which is known to crash Pulseaudio 0.9.10 (and still misbehaves with 0.9.14, but doesn't crash), and enable FMOD. You MUST disable voice because SLVoice uses OpenAL exclusively, and OpenAL will crash your Pulseaudio.

I definitely am - if I kill it from the Process Monitor whilst SL is running all streaming sound immediately stops. However futher investigation reveals that :-

1) ESD starts when I reboot - i.e. it's already running _before_ I start SL.

2) If I kill the ESD process whilst SL is running, all streaming sound immediately stops. However, if I then terminate and re-start SL, streaming sound works as it should but ESD _does_not_ reappear in the Process Monitor !

So it looks as if ESD may be hijacking something else that works OK anyway. What is ESD and how do I stop it running at start-up ?

I'm going to try starting SL, killing ESD, then stopping and restarting SL. If the sound doesn't break subsequently it will indicate that it's ESD that's doing the damage. I'll give it a good long test tonight and report back tomorrow.


The various config programs and utilities all say I'm running ALSA.

How do I check the version of PulseAudio ?

I'll leave any further changes until the ESD situation is clarified.

Once again, thanks for all your help - much appreciated !

Bob

Follow up as promised...

I killed the ESD process before I started SL - I then stayed on SL with good streaming for at least four hours, including changing streams as I moved about, and also had no problems with Gnome after I logged-off.

It's not evidence enough to be proof positive, but it begins to look more like ESD may be the culprit.

Bob

If all your sound-using applications work fine with ESD killed, it should be save to uninstall it. If that turns out to be a mistake later (or if you'll install something new that requires ESD), you can always re-install it easily.

Sorry I haven't replied yet - trying some things out and having to do a fairly long test after each experiment - I'll report back when I'm done

Bob

A result at last - tested for long enough to be sure...

The final answer was simple - I used Synaptic to install 'pulseaudio-esound-compat', which automatically de-installed 'esound'. I now have no sign of ESD, a working stream in SL, and all my other audio stuff (Skype, Rythmbox, Flash etc.) works as it should.

Once again, thanks for all your help.

Bob Unitt

I've been having very similar problems and I tried this too but it seems I already have pulseaudio-esound-compat installed.