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dgtaro
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 01 Nov 2003
Posts: 106
Location: Amsterdam
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 Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 5:21 am Post subject: Sounds: GAIM+XMMS = only one at a time. |
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| When I listen to XMMS and using GAIM at the same time I only hear XMMS, but none from GAIM. And when XMMS stops, GAIM starts to speww out those soundss?! Why? What's wrong here? |
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ectospasm
l33t
Joined: 19 Feb 2003
Posts: 711
Location: Mobile, AL, USA
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| Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 6:14 am Post subject: |
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Unless you have a soundcard that supports hardware mixing, you will get this behavior if you don't have something like artsd or esd running. A quick way to check if your soundcard has hardware mixing support, you can look at the ALSA Soundcard Matrix and find your card there (you are using ALSA, right???). If it's not, you need to install arts or esound. Chances are you already have arts installed if you've installed any KDE apps. Problem is that not many apps outside of KDE can talk to arts, so you'll have to use esound. The Enlightened Sound Daemon homepage can be found here.
I hope that helps.
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Last edited by ectospasm on Thu Jul 08, 2004 6:14 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Kevin72594
Guru
Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Posts: 307
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| Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 6:14 am Post subject: |
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you need to set up software mixing, search the forums...lot's of posts about it 
edit: I would suggest using dmix as your mixer, it does it's thing at a lower level causing less latency. |
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Woody
Guru
Joined: 30 Nov 2002
Posts: 592
Location: Milwaukee
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| Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 6:59 am Post subject: |
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| Kevin72594 wrote: | | edit: I would suggest using dmix as your mixer, it does it's thing at a lower level causing less latency. |
Sorry, but I find that to be a highly suspect statement. If the latency
seems shorter on your system when comparing software mixing
solutions then I would guess you are using different buffer sizes.
I think 'lower level' is also meaningless. dmix only hides the software
mixing (done in user space, not kernel) from the user by making it
look like any old alsa device. But, perhaps there is some truth
to what you said..Nothing personal in the criticism
And oh, desktop users shouldn't care about latency. Even a huge
output latency of 4096 frames @ 44.1Khz = 100ms is irrelevant
when it comes to playing back audio or hearing gaim beep. In fact,
the more latency the better (within limits) because the kernel
doesn't have to be in such a hurry to respond to audio events. Less
of a chance for dropouts.
To the orignal poster you may want to start by reading this:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=140341 |
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Kevin72594
Guru
Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Posts: 307
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| Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 7:05 am Post subject: |
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| I guess i was kinda pullin that outta my ass. on my system at least when i was using the arts mixer in xmms and I would hit stop or play I would have to wait a second or two before it actually did it. And now that I'm using dmix I don't notice that wait anymore. But you're probably right, I probably could have used arts and configured it to do what I wanted it to do. But dmix also works as an alsa device, so if your program supports alsa it supports dmix, not necessarily true with any of the other mixer programs I've seen. At least I dont' think it is? am I right about that? |
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dgtaro
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 01 Nov 2003
Posts: 106
Location: Amsterdam
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| Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 7:20 am Post subject: |
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I found the best workaround for my problem which is to let both GAIM and XMMS uses esound. Works like a charm. ----XMMS was using OSS.
Thanks for the post Woody.
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Woody
Guru
Joined: 30 Nov 2002
Posts: 592
Location: Milwaukee
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| Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 7:24 am Post subject: |
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In principle, if it supports alsa natively then yes it should support dmix.
In practice, its been a painful wait for the bugs to get ironed out. Both
bugs in alsa-lib and in the various applications. So try dmix everyone.
Report bugs! Soon all media apps will be alsa-native, the distros will
ship with the default sound device being plug:dmix:hw:0 and 99% of
the users will say "what's alsa?" and not ever worry about sound
again...
Yes arts is awful. It should be locked in a lock box and put in a dark
dark cave. But the idea of a sound server implementation does not
come at the cost of higher latceny, e.g. Jack is a perfect illustration of
a sound server which can provide LL. |
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Kevin72594
Guru
Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Posts: 307
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| Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 7:32 am Post subject: |
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I see, so i was basically right, just for the wrong reasons  |
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