Thunderbird crappy sound

yannouch · n00b Joined: 26 Sep 2002 Posts: 32 Location: Lyon, FRANCE

Hi

I've just emerged mozilla thunderbird, and all works fine, except sounds. When there's an incoming message, you can choose a sound to be played. I've choosed one, but when thunderbid plays it, it is very ugly (like over saturated / distorded)

If I play this very same sound with xmms for example, it is just fine. All sounds TBird plays are crappy ...

(I use .wav files)

Any idea why ?

Thanks

tragek · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 Sep 2003 Posts: 84

To me it sounds like a sound scheduling error. Are you using a sound server like arts or esd?
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yannouch · n00b Joined: 26 Sep 2002 Posts: 32 Location: Lyon, FRANCE

No, I have no sound server.

Actually I've never understood why I'd need a sound server ...

pzgren · Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 11:56 am Post subject:

yannouch · n00b Joined: 26 Sep 2002 Posts: 32 Location: Lyon, FRANCE

Yes !!! I do hear the difference !!!!

Can this be configured (using something else than esdplay from thunderbird)

Or is there a way for esdplay to play better sounds ?

pzgren · Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 3:59 pm Post subject:

yannouch · n00b Joined: 26 Sep 2002 Posts: 32 Location: Lyon, FRANCE

Well acctually I've also tried to symlink esdplay to aplay, but it didn't work cos aplay complains that it MUST be called (the progname) aplay.

Then I've tried to put in /usr/bin/esdplay :

#!/bin/sh
exec aplay $*

It works out of TBird (esdplay foo.wav works fine), but doesn't work with TBird ...

labba · Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2004 1:23 am Post subject:

Hi!
I have exactly the same problem... Using KDE 3.3.1, alsa and TB 0.9... Can't get TB playing any sound at all... Any solution for this??

Thanks...

uncleringo · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 21 Jul 2004 Posts: 146

It's pretty annoying. I get sound on and off, but generally it's crackly, and sometimes only a crackle. Let's hope they take out the reliance on esd. I had no idea esd was that bad before reading this thread

labba · Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 3:36 pm Post subject:

esd suxxs

I use this extension for mail notification: http://globs.chez.tiscali.fr/moz_extensions/yamb.html
Works like a charm!

LokiCoki · Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 7:19 pm Post subject:

Thanks labba!

Yamb works perfectly for me as well as well. I just downloaded it, installed it from Thunderbird (Tools >> Extensions >> Install >> Choose "yamb_v054.xpi") and configured it to play a wav file with aplay. It's marvelous!

RioFL · Guru Joined: 31 Oct 2002 Posts: 407

bgraw3 · Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 2:55 pm Post subject:

RioFL · Guru Joined: 31 Oct 2002 Posts: 407

bgraw3 · Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 3:44 pm Post subject:

It appears that esound is some kind of sound server. If the esound daemon (esd) is not running, esdplay must make its best effort to play some kind of sound.
I use alsa on fluxbox. Things seem fine.
There are some notes about KDE, arts, ESD, etc. here: http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=Dmix+Kde+-+arts%2C+ESD+and+SDL+quick+and+dirty+HOWTO