Sound works with Gnome, not with KDE

[Kevin Kofler]

Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Some recent update to F15 seems to have banjaxed my sound output under
> KDE. The Systems Settings widget shows only Analog Output, no Pulseaudio,
> even with "Special Devices" selected.

This is expected! Phonon detects that PulseAudio is running and shows you 
only the actual hardware devices reachable through PulseAudio. Setting their 
priorities will set their priorities within PulseAudio. So it is normal that 
there is NO "PulseAudio" device in the list. ALL the devices you see are 
being accessed through PulseAudio.

> I restarted the PA server and now it does appear

That's because you restarted PulseAudio without using the
start-pulseaudio-kde script, so the module-device-manager PulseAudio module, 
which allows Phonon to see your individual sound devices and set their 
preferences inside PulseAudio, is not loaded.

> but still no sound.

That's your real problem. It is not related to the above.

> Speakers are connected and on. KMix has all volume controls at max, and
> is not muted. pavucontrol ditto.

Have you checked the ALSA-level volumes?

kquitapp kmix
KMIX_PULSEAUDIO_DISABLE=1 kmix

(Alternatively, use the ncurses-based alsamixer.)

Check if anything is muted there.

        Kevin Kofler