On Saturday, Jul 16th 2005 at 11:46 +1000, quoth david walcroft: =>Hi => I still seem to have problems in getting Alsa to work with KDE,OSS =>works ok but Alsa brings up an error that "device: default can't be opened for =>playback (Permission denied)" when starting in Sound System. => =>I tried this "cat /usr/share/sounds/KDE_Startup.wav > /dev/dsp" =>and returned distortion and screeching. => =>Any ideas as to what is going on please => => david I'm on a system that works fine from an audio perspective and there are some files that sound fine if I redirect them to /dev/dsp. The one you chose is *not* one of them. Here's one that does work: 532 > file /usr/games/chromium/data/wav/boom.wav /usr/games/chromium/data/wav/boom.wav: RIFF (little-endian) data, WAVE audio, Microsoft PCM, 8 bit, mono 11025 Hz 533 > And here's one that doesn't: 531 > file /usr/share/sounds/KDE_Startup.wav /usr/share/sounds/KDE_Startup.wav: RIFF (little-endian) data, WAVE audio, Microsoft PCM, 16 bit, mono 22050 Hz The proper test should be to use the play program to handle whatever conversions are needed. Also, I'm not an expert on this subject, but my understanding is that .au files are always the lowest common denominator file type and that /dev/audio is always the lowest common denominator audio device. (If I'm wrong, someone please correct^H^H^H^H^H^H^Heducate me. -- Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have .0. happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ ..0 Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- 000 individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question? steveo at syslang.net