[plug] Alsa problems

[Adam Hewitt]

Its been a while since I used Linux on the desktop so I'm a little vague 
on the answers, and I need to make some assumptions on your setup (as 
you didn't specify).

I will assume that you are using gnome as your windows manager (if I am 
wrong this may still apply anyways). Gnome uses a translation layer that 
sits between your applications and the sound card driver (I can't recall 
the name of it off the top of my head), and by default I believe it uses 
OSS as the driver. In order to get ALSA to work as you are describing, 
you need to change the translation layer to be ALSA (come to think of it 
I think the software is called esd-oss and esd-alsa), and then point all 
of your applications to this instead of directly to the driver.

I may be way off mark, but as I said I haven't used Linux on the desktop 
for a while and you didn't provide any details of your setup.

Adam.

Michael Collard wrote:

>Whats the deal with Alsa? It seems all modern linux systems use it, and
>on changing to alsa today from OSS (for a test), I found it has less
>capabilities, just not as nice and easy to work with. The sound card im
>using is a 'es1371' one, a vibra or something. A single application can
>make sound no problems, but multiple applications cannot whereas they
>could when using OSS.
>
>With OSS though, one (or more) program(s) could use SDL output while the
>actual /dev/dsp device was in use by another application. Under alsa,
>none of this works, and not to mention that its impossible to compile a
>32 bit mplayer on a 64 bit system with ALSA (64 bit) support, hence my
>mplayer (32 bit so I can use win32 dlls) cannot use ALSA either, though
>can still use that OSS compatibility. Also, no two applications
>supporting ALSA can make sound at the same time. This just seems
>primitive from where I'm standing.
>
>Obviously the above cant be the same for everyone. Surely if it was then
>nobody would use ALSA, so what am I missing here?
>
>Regards
>Michael Collard
>
>
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