One of the top todo items for Palm has been sound in the emulator.  If you’re a developer you’ve probably noticed this line in your log file before:

Error: file:///var/usr/palm/applications/com.dynaptic.matchem/index.html
Error: service request: com.palm.audio is not running.

This error message got me to wondering the other night so I started poking around using Novaterm.  In the /etc directory are two directories:  event.d and event.dis.  For those not familiar with it, event.d is a directory used by the Upstart init daemon.  Inside event.dis are several files related to audio.  I tried copying the files from event.dis to event.d that were related with media, rebooted the virtual machine and then loaded up a game with sounds.

The good news is that it worked!  It seems .wav files play just fine.  However, .mp3 files would not play.  I used an .mp3 file as the background music of my game so that didn’t work.

Here’s a simple command you can copy and paste that should get you what you need:

mv /etc/event.dis/audiod /etc/event.d
mv /etc/event.dis/mediaserver /etc/event.d
mv /etc/event.dis/pulseaudio /etc/event.d
mv /etc/event.dis/systemsoundsloader /etc/event.d

Hopefully this will be helpful to those you needing to test sound on the emulator!

Update: The latest version of the SDK now pops up an error when you try to use sound on the emulator:  “Audio is not defined”

Also, to access the emulator’s shell under Windows you can use: novacom -t open tty://