Applications playing sound at the same time?

Cubano

Is it possible to have two applications for example mplayer and amarok playing (with sound) at the same time?

On my system if I am playing a tune in amarok and I open a film say in mplayer I will get an error saying that sound cannot be initialised:

Could not initialize audio device -> no sound

More over if I then close amarok down and try and restart mplayer there is still no audio for a while as though amarok has still got a lock onn the device.

Is there any thing I can do here?

Cubano · Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 9:50 pm Post subject:

Oh I should mention I am using alsa sound which is compiled in to 2.6.11-gentoo-r6 kernel
with alsa-lib-1.0.9

zephid · n00b Joined: 07 Sep 2003 Posts: 39 Location: Denmark

I am interrested in an answer too, got the same problem.

dlx · Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 12:09 pm Post subject: It's possible

Hi,

that is usually possible. If you're lucky just prepending the programs you want to play sound with, with "aoss" on the command-line will do:

Example:

$ aoss mpg123 *mp3

aoss is a simple shell-script that just sets some environment variables.

If you're not so lucky, you might need a /etc/asound.conf (global) or a ~/.asoundrc file. Maybe http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/asoundrc.php?module=Generic or http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_ALSA_sound_mixer_aka_dmix is useful to you. "dmix" is the keyword you might want to enter into google. Dmix is a part of alsa that can mix the output of several applications and send the combined stream to the soundcard.

I think the aoss-stuff is only necessary for programs that use the old oss-libs instead of alsa. I'm not 100%ly sure, though.

I could only get the aoss solution to work for programs that use the same ouput-sample-frequency. For example I can't make xkoules play sound, while listening to mp3s. Probably dmix isn't smart enough to do that, or maybe I just overlooked something.[/b]

Bye Paul

joacim · n00b Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 5

i had the same problem..

but now it works great, I can play music with bmp and play ppracer at the same rime (with sound in both) ..

i'm using kernel 2.6.13 with snd-intel8x0 compiled inside the kernel, i dont know if it work's with the drivers compiled as modules..

Cubano · Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 9:51 am Post subject:

Good to hear its working for you Joacim....

Is this working as per method mentioned by dlx?

Are you using the beforementioned aoss

could you please show what is in your

/etc/asound.conf (global) or a ~/.asoundrc files?