Sharing sound device???

dpt22 · n00b Joined: 05 Feb 2003 Posts: 34

I have the on-board VIA sound working using ALSA but when I start and application such as XMMS or Xine they wait until the sound device is free. So they appear to hang but are in fact just sat there waiting. I'm using the KDE 3.1.1 desktop and have found starting & stopping the aRts sound server solves the issue. I've recompiled the server too just in case.

I'd like them to be able share, I'm sure it's possible to do this but don't know what to do? any help would be appreciated.

Cheers

David

mikepb78 · Apprentice Joined: 27 Feb 2003 Posts: 171 Location: London

Well unfortunately you have a poor soundcard or driver. You can either use Kde's arts to allow you to have 2 applications to access you soundcard at the same time, but you will find that there might be some sound lag. Xine/Xmms and mplayer have arts plugins that allow those applications to use the arts soundserver the share the soundcard. Otherwise, get a better soundcard.

BloodPuP · n00b Joined: 16 Nov 2002 Posts: 5

The alsa site has this in their release notes for 0.9.0rc8:
"You will find in the alsa-lib package the dmix plugin which allows mixing of multiple PCM streams together without the client/server mechanism."

Sounds like something that could fix your problem. Though I have not been able to find any documentation on how to use dmix. Anybody got this working?

Basti_litho · Apprentice Joined: 13 Aug 2002 Posts: 179

from via82xx.c (0.9.1):

* Changes:
*
* Dec. 19, 2002 Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>
* - use the DSX channels for the first pcm playback.
* (on VIA8233, 8233C and 8235 only)
* this will allow you play simultaneously up to 4 streams.
* multi-channel playback is assigned to the second device
* on these chips.

:-D

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