Troubleshooting sound problems

To check that sound is working independently of aRts, make sure that artsd isn't running and then try playing sound through XMMS or another multimedia application that isn't a part of TDE. If that application doesn't play sound, then your general sound setup is probably broken and it's not a TDE problem.

Try playing sound with artsplay /path/to/some/soundfile. Try various formats, ogg, mp3 and wav. Any error messages there might be useful in pointing you in the right direction.

Try setting the aRts output method to OSS. In the KDE Control Center go to Sound & Multimedia->Sound System. On the Hardware tab, under Select the audio device choose Open Sound System. If you are running alsa this will use the OSS emulation, which may give better or worse results.

Running artsd -l 0 from a terminal will give you a lot of debug output, some of which might help you to diagnose the problem. Trying this in conjunction with using artsplay in a second terminal can give a wealth of information. If an artsd instance is already running, exit it with artsshell terminate

Assuming you've installed aRts correctly and you still have the codecs installed your previous TDE installation needed, possibly there is a problem with your knotifyrc. To confirm this, try temporarily renaming the file. A new one will be created when starting TDE.