nforce4 audio, only one sound stream at a time [SOLVED]

[H3g3m0n]

My sound appars to work find however if i attempt to use more than one sound crating device the other one will freeze and wait untill the origional program has been stopped. For instance if i am playing an mp3 and chatting in gaim, when the mp3 ends i will get all the gaim sound effects played at once rather then when the messages where sent, or if i am using xmms while attempting to start mplayer, mplayer won't appear untill i close xmms. Im sure this is a fairly common problem since i rember hearing about it befoure but carn't find anything specifc. I'm using inbuild kernel ALSA support.

[asiobob]

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_ALSA_sound_mixer_aka_dmix#The_dmix_device

Try dmix. Tell us how it goes, I've never used it. It's a software mixer.
Either your hardware cannot do hardware mixing OR more probably the driver doesn't support it

[H3g3m0n]

Ah thanks, that got it. Id actually been skimming though the guide previously and tried some of the ~/.asoundrc files but i missed the main one which i spotted when i went back
Kinda weird that ALSA needs all that work for what must be one of the most common sound cards around now (since its built in on just about every amd mobo).

For anyone else with the problem add the stuff from the following linke to ~/.asoundrc
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_ALSA_sound_mixer_aka_dmix#intel8x0_audio_card_integrated_on_nforce2_motherboards

I might also have a look at the official nforce-audio drivers that appear to be in portage.

[asiobob]

excellent. Just a question...since I might be getting a laptop and will have to use dmix.
Do you just run your alsa based apps normally??

[H3g3m0n]

Yep no weird command line stuff or specific configs for programs, everything just ran normally. I was worried i would need to install somthing like arts but nothing like that was required (although i am running esd but i don't think its needed).

[asiobob]

Excellent!!!