[plug] Alsa, esd, quake and xmms

[Adrian Blockley]

On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 11:36:16 +0800
Tim White <weirdo at tigris.org> wrote:

>  Being the cautious type and one who /needs/ sound for a running system
>  I compiled ALSA and OSS as modules when I upgraded to a 2.6.6 kernel.
>  This meant that as soon as I booted I had OSS working and could take
>  the time to try and get ALSA working. After much trouble an update to
>  ALSA-utils and libasound(2?) I have managed to get ALSA working (the
>  problem was alsaconf wasn't loading the module for the sound card but
>  it loaded everything else.)
>  I can now run XMMS off esd, oss(emulation), and ALSA. I can also run 
>  quake3a when esd is not running and XMMS isn't attempting to use the 
>  soundcard through oss or ALSA (e.g. when the the song changes quake 
>  finishes loading.)
>  I think that both esd and quake3 use the oss emulation. I like esd and 
>  it means I can use XMMS, gaim, gnome... all at once. Unfortunately I 
>  can't then run quake or anything else that uses oss and not esd. I
>  would like to use purely ALSA and not esd or oss-emulation if at all
>  possible but don't think that there is a patch for quake yet for ALSA.
>  
>  If anyone knows of a way to get both XMMS and quake to work at the same
>  
>  time then please tell me.
>  
>  I was thinking that ALSA would be better than oss but if it can't allow
>  
>  simultaneous use of the sound card then its no use to me. I think then 
>  that is time that ALL applications accessed the sound card through a 
>  generic interface that allows simultaneous use of the sound card (like 
>  esd but on the driver/kernel side.)
>  
>  Thanks
>  Tim

G'day Tim,

I had similar problems with some apps wanting Arts and Others ESD and others wanting direct access to /dev/dsp.

I think dmix will allow the oss emulator in alsa to behave the way that you are wanting.

I found a lot of help in Gentoo user forums which I think are a fantastic source of linux help.  As always Google is your friend but      http://opensrc.org/alsa/index.php?page=DmixPlugin is probably a good place to start. I have included a copy of my .asoundrc below.

Cheers

Age

pcm.dmixer {
    type dmix
    ipc_key 1024
    slave {
        pcm "hw:0,0"
        period_time 0
        period_size 1024
        buffer_size 8192
 rate 44100
    }

    bindings {
        0 0
        1 1
    }
}

pcm.dsp0 {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.!default {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.default {
 type plug
 slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

ctl.mixer0 {
    type hw
    card 0
}







-- 

"There are only 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who 
understand binary, and those who don't."

Adrian  Blockley	 
32 Darwinia Loop 
Canningvale WA, 6155

Ph: 08 9256 1953
Mobile: 0405 609 990