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Re: Sound card is only usable by one application at a time

 

 

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w41ter at gmail

Dec 4, 2009, 2:20 PM

Post #1 of 9 (367 views)
Permalink
Re: Sound card is only usable by one application at a time

On 12/03/2009 09:08 PM, Joshua Murphy wrote:
...
> Lately, I've had zero issues with alsa pretty much configuring itself
> properly, given I'm using the in kernel alsa drivers for my systems...
> and it hasn't required any manual configuration of dmix or similar to
> function properly. Last time I used a separate sound daemon (aside
> from a short stent with Ubuntu on my netbook that, I think, had me
> using pulseaudio), I was running esound to manage audio from a
> headless box over my network... and ESD was playing nicely with other
> straight alsa apps on the same box...

I discovered a few weeks ago that I could completely delete all traces
of arts, pulse, *and* esd, and still I can listen to a podcast from
npr.org with firefox and play an mp3 using audacious at the same time.
(Which drives me totally nuts, BTW, and I did it only as a test.)

As you say, alsa seems to DTRT by itself these days. The only thing
I'm not sure about is whether the gnome-panel volume/mixer applet is
now doing what esound used to do.

If you still have esound installed you can try it yourself. Just
remove the arts, esd, and pulse USE flags first, then remove any/all
of those packages from the machine and revdep-rebuild. It's amazing
how many packages are linked against esound and AFAICT they no longer
need to be. (This applies to gnome, of course.)

OTOH, I haven't tested every sound-related app on my machine, so I
might be missing some important exceptions.


poisonbl at gmail

Dec 4, 2009, 8:12 PM

Post #2 of 9 (349 views)
Permalink
Re: Re: Sound card is only usable by one application at a time [In reply to]

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 4:43 PM, walt <w41ter [at] gmail> wrote:
> On 12/03/2009 09:08 PM, Joshua Murphy wrote:
> ...
>>
>> Lately, I've had zero issues with alsa pretty much configuring itself
>> properly, given I'm using the in kernel alsa drivers for my systems...
>> and it hasn't required any manual configuration of dmix or similar to
>> function properly. Last time I used a separate sound daemon (aside
>> from a short stent with Ubuntu on my netbook that, I think, had me
>> using pulseaudio), I was running esound to manage audio from a
>> headless box over my network... and ESD was playing nicely with other
>> straight alsa apps on the same box...
>
> I discovered a few weeks ago that I could completely delete all traces
> of arts, pulse, *and* esd, and still I can listen to a podcast from
> npr.org with firefox and play an mp3 using audacious at the same time.
> (Which drives me totally nuts, BTW, and I did it only as a test.)
>
> As you say, alsa seems to DTRT by itself these days.  The only thing
> I'm not sure about is whether the gnome-panel volume/mixer applet is
> now doing what esound used to do.
>
> If you still have esound installed you can try it yourself.  Just
> remove the arts, esd, and pulse USE flags first, then remove any/all
> of those packages from the machine and revdep-rebuild.  It's amazing
> how many packages are linked against esound and AFAICT they no longer
> need to be.  (This applies to gnome, of course.)
>
> OTOH, I haven't tested every sound-related app on my machine, so I
> might be missing some important exceptions.

All Gnome's volume/mixer applet does, AFAIK, is the same as alsamixer,
on a less cli/ncurses interface... just volume control for the
channels the card tells the driver to tell the alsa subsystem it has
;) ... it doesn't have anything more, really, to do with the actual
'mixing' than that, and it works just as well without it, as evidenced
by my netbook with ratpoison, no arts, esd, pulseaudio, etc...
listening to a radio stream on one aterm that's running mplayer
(outputting to bare alsa) and getting prompt and proper alerts from
Skype at the same time.

'Course, all the anecdotal evidence in the world won't make the
problem the OP is seeing.

--
Poison [BLX]
Joshua M. Murphy


realnc at arcor

Dec 5, 2009, 10:20 AM

Post #3 of 9 (351 views)
Permalink
Re: Sound card is only usable by one application at a time [In reply to]

You didn't mention whether you tried running the alsasound service in
order to get dmix. If enabled, it doesn't matter what sound device the
apps want to open.

On 12/05/2009 05:51 PM, Yoav Luft wrote:
> hmmm. I've managed to focus the problem: Some programs try to access
> to sound device called "hw:0,0" and there for do not allow it to be
> shared. MPD was one of them, and when I changed the setting in
> mpd.conf to using "default" it works. The flash player, though, still
> tries to access the hardware directly. I'm not sure how to reconfigure
> it. I'm using the adobe player.
> Can anyone think of away of making all programs use "default" sound
> output rather than "hw:0,0"?
> Should I report that as a bug to the mpd package maintainer, that the
> default setting try to access the sound device directly?
>
> On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 6:12 AM, Joshua Murphy<poisonbl [at] gmail> wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 4:43 PM, walt<w41ter [at] gmail> wrote:
>>> On 12/03/2009 09:08 PM, Joshua Murphy wrote:
>>> ...
>>>>
>>>> Lately, I've had zero issues with alsa pretty much configuring itself
>>>> properly, given I'm using the in kernel alsa drivers for my systems...
>>>> and it hasn't required any manual configuration of dmix or similar to
>>>> function properly. Last time I used a separate sound daemon (aside
>>>> from a short stent with Ubuntu on my netbook that, I think, had me
>>>> using pulseaudio), I was running esound to manage audio from a
>>>> headless box over my network... and ESD was playing nicely with other
>>>> straight alsa apps on the same box...
>>>
>>> I discovered a few weeks ago that I could completely delete all traces
>>> of arts, pulse, *and* esd, and still I can listen to a podcast from
>>> npr.org with firefox and play an mp3 using audacious at the same time.
>>> (Which drives me totally nuts, BTW, and I did it only as a test.)
>>>
>>> As you say, alsa seems to DTRT by itself these days. The only thing
>>> I'm not sure about is whether the gnome-panel volume/mixer applet is
>>> now doing what esound used to do.
>>>
>>> If you still have esound installed you can try it yourself. Just
>>> remove the arts, esd, and pulse USE flags first, then remove any/all
>>> of those packages from the machine and revdep-rebuild. It's amazing
>>> how many packages are linked against esound and AFAICT they no longer
>>> need to be. (This applies to gnome, of course.)
>>>
>>> OTOH, I haven't tested every sound-related app on my machine, so I
>>> might be missing some important exceptions.
>>
>> All Gnome's volume/mixer applet does, AFAIK, is the same as alsamixer,
>> on a less cli/ncurses interface... just volume control for the
>> channels the card tells the driver to tell the alsa subsystem it has
>> ;) ... it doesn't have anything more, really, to do with the actual
>> 'mixing' than that, and it works just as well without it, as evidenced
>> by my netbook with ratpoison, no arts, esd, pulseaudio, etc...
>> listening to a radio stream on one aterm that's running mplayer
>> (outputting to bare alsa) and getting prompt and proper alerts from
>> Skype at the same time.
>>
>> 'Course, all the anecdotal evidence in the world won't make the
>> problem the OP is seeing.
>>
>> --
>> Poison [BLX]
>> Joshua M. Murphy
>>
>>
>
>


yoav.luft at gmail

Dec 5, 2009, 1:36 PM

Post #4 of 9 (348 views)
Permalink
Re: Re: Sound card is only usable by one application at a time [In reply to]

alsasound is on boot runlevel, so it's running. Still, some apps, like
flash movies in firefox, don't behave nicely.

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 7:15 PM, Nikos Chantziaras <realnc [at] arcor> wrote:
> You didn't mention whether you tried running the alsasound service in order
> to get dmix.  If enabled, it doesn't matter what sound device the apps want
> to open.
>
> On 12/05/2009 05:51 PM, Yoav Luft wrote:
>>
>> hmmm. I've managed to focus the problem: Some programs try to access
>> to sound device called "hw:0,0" and there for do not allow it to be
>> shared. MPD was one of them, and when I changed the setting in
>> mpd.conf to using "default" it works. The flash player, though, still
>> tries to access the hardware directly. I'm not sure how to reconfigure
>> it. I'm using the adobe player.
>> Can anyone think of away of making all programs use "default" sound
>> output rather than "hw:0,0"?
>> Should I report that as a bug to the mpd package maintainer, that the
>> default setting try to access the sound device directly?
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 6:12 AM, Joshua Murphy<poisonbl [at] gmail>  wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 4:43 PM, walt<w41ter [at] gmail>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 12/03/2009 09:08 PM, Joshua Murphy wrote:
>>>> ...
>>>>>
>>>>> Lately, I've had zero issues with alsa pretty much configuring itself
>>>>> properly, given I'm using the in kernel alsa drivers for my systems...
>>>>> and it hasn't required any manual configuration of dmix or similar to
>>>>> function properly. Last time I used a separate sound daemon (aside
>>>>> from a short stent with Ubuntu on my netbook that, I think, had me
>>>>> using pulseaudio), I was running esound to manage audio from a
>>>>> headless box over my network... and ESD was playing nicely with other
>>>>> straight alsa apps on the same box...
>>>>
>>>> I discovered a few weeks ago that I could completely delete all traces
>>>> of arts, pulse, *and* esd, and still I can listen to a podcast from
>>>> npr.org with firefox and play an mp3 using audacious at the same time.
>>>> (Which drives me totally nuts, BTW, and I did it only as a test.)
>>>>
>>>> As you say, alsa seems to DTRT by itself these days.  The only thing
>>>> I'm not sure about is whether the gnome-panel volume/mixer applet is
>>>> now doing what esound used to do.
>>>>
>>>> If you still have esound installed you can try it yourself.  Just
>>>> remove the arts, esd, and pulse USE flags first, then remove any/all
>>>> of those packages from the machine and revdep-rebuild.  It's amazing
>>>> how many packages are linked against esound and AFAICT they no longer
>>>> need to be.  (This applies to gnome, of course.)
>>>>
>>>> OTOH, I haven't tested every sound-related app on my machine, so I
>>>> might be missing some important exceptions.
>>>
>>> All Gnome's volume/mixer applet does, AFAIK, is the same as alsamixer,
>>> on a less cli/ncurses interface... just volume control for the
>>> channels the card tells the driver to tell the alsa subsystem it has
>>> ;) ... it doesn't have anything more, really, to do with the actual
>>> 'mixing' than that, and it works just as well without it, as evidenced
>>> by my netbook with ratpoison, no arts, esd, pulseaudio, etc...
>>> listening to a radio stream on one aterm that's running mplayer
>>> (outputting to bare alsa) and getting prompt and proper alerts from
>>> Skype at the same time.
>>>
>>> 'Course, all the anecdotal evidence in the world won't make the
>>> problem the OP is seeing.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Poison [BLX]
>>> Joshua M. Murphy
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>


w41ter at gmail

Dec 5, 2009, 6:20 PM

Post #5 of 9 (356 views)
Permalink
Re: Sound card is only usable by one application at a time [In reply to]

On 12/05/2009 01:36 PM, Yoav Luft wrote:
> alsasound is on boot runlevel, so it's running. Still, some apps, like
> flash movies in firefox, don't behave nicely.

Can you give us a URL for a flash movie so I can test?


daidxor at gmail

Dec 5, 2009, 6:28 PM

Post #6 of 9 (354 views)
Permalink
Re: Re: Sound card is only usable by one application at a time [In reply to]

>>
>> alsasound is on boot runlevel, so it's running. Still, some apps, like
>> flash movies in firefox, don't behave nicely.
>
> Can you give us a URL for a flash movie so I can test?
>

Since I'm having trouble too, here is a youtube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoAbMfg9_Uk

Maybe you'll like the track.

:P

~daid


realnc at arcor

Dec 6, 2009, 12:20 AM

Post #7 of 9 (356 views)
Permalink
Re: Sound card is only usable by one application at a time [In reply to]

You *might* want to look into OSS4 if your card is supported by it :P
It will require a rebuild of many packages though ("oss -alsa" in
make.conf) and it requires using non-portage packages from an overlay
and rebuilding your kernel with sound support completely disabled.

For what it's worth, that's what I use for a quite some time now.

On 12/05/2009 11:36 PM, Yoav Luft wrote:
> alsasound is on boot runlevel, so it's running. Still, some apps, like
> flash movies in firefox, don't behave nicely.
>
> On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 7:15 PM, Nikos Chantziaras<realnc [at] arcor> wrote:
>> You didn't mention whether you tried running the alsasound service in order
>> to get dmix. If enabled, it doesn't matter what sound device the apps want
>> to open.


7v5w7go9ub0o at gmail

Dec 7, 2009, 5:24 AM

Post #8 of 9 (341 views)
Permalink
Re: Sound card is only usable by one application at a time [In reply to]

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> You *might* want to look into OSS4 if your card is supported by it :P
> It will require a rebuild of many packages though ("oss -alsa" in
> make.conf) and it requires using non-portage packages from an overlay
> and rebuilding your kernel with sound support completely disabled.
>
> For what it's worth, that's what I use for a quite some time now.

Do you see any advantage(s) to using OSS4 over alsa?

e.g.

1. less distortion and/or better quality?
2. more control over the sound (e.g. equalizers)?
3. others?

What about downsides?

(I am presently using alsa, and intermittently have blocked sounds -
guess it is due to how the app was written.)

TIA


realnc at arcor

Dec 7, 2009, 2:20 PM

Post #9 of 9 (342 views)
Permalink
Re: Sound card is only usable by one application at a time [In reply to]

On 12/07/2009 03:24 PM, 7v5w7go9ub0o wrote:
> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>> You *might* want to look into OSS4 if your card is supported by it :P
>> It will require a rebuild of many packages though ("oss -alsa" in
>> make.conf) and it requires using non-portage packages from an overlay
>> and rebuilding your kernel with sound support completely disabled.
>>
>> For what it's worth, that's what I use for a quite some time now.
>
> Do you see any advantage(s) to using OSS4 over alsa?
>
> e.g.
>
> 1. less distortion and/or better quality?

My equipment is not good enough for me to notice OSS4's better mixing
quality (I have 50$ speakers :P).

> 2. more control over the sound (e.g. equalizers)?

It does not have equalizers. It does however provide per-application
volume levels. That is, the mixer application allows me to lower the
volume of "Amarok" for example while leaving all other apps alone.
Every mixed application by vmix (OSS4's "dmix") gets its own volume control.


> 3. others?

The most important for me is that it always does mixing and is fully
compatible with OSS (duh!).

The second most important is audio latency. ALSA on my system is too
slow (I can notice a delay between firing a shot and hearing the *bang*
in Doom 3 for example, or hitting a key and hearing a note in LMMS.)

A third is that OSS4 can be used together with ALSA's userspace lib, so
ALSA-only apps can be compatible with OSS4. But not all ALSA apps work
with this setup (one I found that doesn't is Firefox, see below).


> What about downsides?

A downside for me is that the HTML5 video/audio support in Firefox needs
ALSA; trying to watch an HTML5 Ogg Theora video with alsa-lib using OSS4
results in a 5FPS video playback even though there's no CPU utilization.

(Note that Flash videos have no issues.)

Another downside is that mixer applications (for example those of Gnome
and KDE) do not support even a single feature of OSS4, so those mixers
tend to show a pretty spartan amount of controls.

Yet another downside is that installing it can be a pain, especially if
you have "-oss" in your make.conf; a big package rebuild is in order then.


> (I am presently using alsa, and intermittently have blocked sounds -
> guess it is due to how the app was written.)

This was the reason I used OSS4 a while back when it got open sourced.
I was lucky my card (SB Live 24-bit) was supported by it; OSS4's
hardware support list is shorter than ALSA's.

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