Ubuntu 8.04

Audacity ® 1.3.4-beta (Unicode)

Packard Bell Easy Note laptop: 1,6 GHz (dual core), 2 GB.

Procedure:

Open File (doesn't matter which one, as long as it is a supported file format)

Click Play

Project plays but no sound can be heard. The output level meters however, move as they should.

Ctrl+p

Nothing happens for about 15-20 seconds (very frustrating)

A dialogue window appears.

Playback device is set to ALSA: HDA Intel: AD198x Digital (hw: 0,1)

Change it to ALSA: HDA Intel: AD198x Analog(hw: 0,0)

Nothing happens for about 30 seconds (extremely frustrating)

Klick Play

Nothing happens for about 8 seconds (not acceptable but not very frustrating either)

An error box appears: "Error while opening sound device. Please check the output device settings and the project sample rate."

The thing about the sample rate just has to be nonsense, because I never use anything else than 44.1 kHz. Whereever I look, it is set to 44.1 kHz and all my sound files are 44.1 kHz files.

I guess Pulse Audio is involved somehow, but I don't really understand what it's for and what to do with it. All I want to do is to edit some sound files and hear the result, which I could easily with Audacity on Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10 on the very same laptop.

Any hints about next step in the troubleshooting procedure?

Johnny Rosenberg