Cannot play mp3

[Duffy]

Previously, I have been able to play mp3.

Now I get no response whatsoever.

I can play mp3 using VLC, but I'm not sure what player xbmc uses?

Any thoughts?

Duffy

[arkay]

That's a new one. XBMC uses all internal codecs. There's nothing to change system wise. The only thing I can thing of is that the volume is either muted (happens easily when pressing 3/6/9 on the remote, same to undo it), or you've got digital SPDIF but not analog via SPDIF (which sometimes happens when switching between Myth/XBMC). It's an alsa bug that I work around in the switch script but even on mine it happens occassionally. Usually to fix it I need to swap back to Myth, then back to XBMC.

Cheers,

Arkay.

[Duffy]

Arkay

I don't think its a sound issue. The file doesn't even play. I see no progress bar, nothing. I select the song, hit play and nothing...

I will right click the song and select play with default player, then nothing...

I have removed xbmc and installed it again. No change (although all my settings were retained).

Duffy

PS I would put a CD into the drive and hit play, then nothing...

[arkay]

Ok. First things first. Where are these files stored? Need some more information.
When you talk about them not playing from the cd do mean a normal cd or a cd with mp3's on it?

Cheers,

Arkay.

[Duffy]

Arkay

The CD is just a normal commercial CD placed in the DVD drive.

I have played normal DVDs from this drive under XBMC by just selecting play in the bottom right hand corner. Yet, with a CD nothing happens when I select paly.

The mp3 are stored on the backend in my audio folder and added to xbmc by selecting sources. I have played these files before (long ago when I initially installed xbmc).

Duffy

PS Thougth I would try a DVD in the drive and now that won't load in XBMC. Hmmmm?

[arkay]

Arkay

The CD is just a normal commercial CD placed in the DVD drive.

I have played normal DVDs from this drive under XBMC by just selecting play in the bottom right hand corner. Yet, with a CD nothing happens when I select paly.

Admittedly that is something that I have never tried to do. I don't know if it should work or not. I do know that usually to play CDDA you need to have the audio cable from the cd rom drive itself connected to the audio input on the motherboard unless the software is capable of essentially ripping the track while it's playing it. That being said I just dropped an audio cd in to my box to test and not only did it work but it went out to the net and grabbed the tracklist for the disc as well!

The mp3 are stored on the backend in my audio folder and added to xbmc by selecting sources. I have played these files before (long ago when I initially installed xbmc).

Duffy

PS Thougth I would try a DVD in the drive and now that won't load in XBMC. Hmmmm?

You've got some wierdness going on here as all these things work perfectly for me. I'd say it's related to your drive but that's not going to stop mp3 from playing off the server. Not really sure what to suggest other than perhaps checking the settings in XBMC and/or rebooting the frontend and seeing if that makes a difference.

Cheers,

Arkay.

[Duffy]

Arkay

A complete power off/on fixed some of it.

Can now play DVDs from the drive.

Placed a CD in the drive and hit play. XBMC downloaded the cd info from the net and then show the first song to play. I hit play, but nothing happened.

Perhaps a codex problem or a problem with the default player?

Still can't play mp3.

The default player is PAPlayer. Anyway of checking its installation or reinstalling it?

I'll keep playing around.

Duffy

[arkay]

As far as I know there is no codecs to change. XBMC uses it's internal player and that is it. On the original xbox you could choose between paplayer and mplayer but under Linux I think it's paplayer only.

Something odd is going on. One thing you can try, in your home directory there will be a directory called .xbmc. All your personal configuration for XBMC is in there. You can rename that directory to something like .xbmc.old then run xbmc. It will create a new directory. You will lose all your setting in the new directory though you can add back just the mp3 share, and try the cd and see if it works. You can always remove the newly created .xbmc and rename .xbmc.old back to .xbmc to restore the original settings. You may even be able to copy back just the database portion of the old .xbmc settings so you don't lose all your media configuration data.

Something to try at least.

Cheers,

Arkay.

[Duffy]

Arkay

Problem solved and a few things discovered. All problems were associated with the previous changes I did to get digital sound working.

If you recall, one thing I did was create /etc/modprobe.d/asound.conf to change the default device. Contents were:

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 0
device 1
}

I commented out the lines, rebooted and my problems were solved. Digital sound still worked!

So I thought I would undo the other change I made to get digital sound working (adding a line to alsa-base) and sure enough, digital sound still worked.

So, my mobo worked from the start.

If you want to know how to waste 3 weeks of your time, just ask me - I'm an expert at that.

Duffy

[arkay]

Hehe. You weren't the first and won't be the last to spend hours and hours working on the wrong end of the problem.

I remember a story from years back when a guy called Jeff Minter was writing a game for the Commodore 64. He spent an entire day on his code because he had one stray pixel on the screen. No matter what he did he couldn't get rid of this one annoying pixel. Until he realised it was a spec of dust on the monitor

It's good to know the motherboards works 100% as it's current kit that people can use to replicate your system.

What's even better is if someone in Melbourne were to buy identical hardware a clone of your system to there's would just boot and work. You could give family and friends a fully working system without any work aside from hardware assembly.

Cheers,

Arkay.