Re: PulseAudio--is there a viable alternative?
On Mon, 4 Feb 2013 09:13:30 -0800
Kelly Clowers <kelly.clowers@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 8:44 AM, Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk> wrote:
> > On Mon, Feb 04, 2013 at 08:36:34AM -0800, Kelly Clowers wrote:
> >> On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 8:28 AM, "Morel Bérenger"
> >> <berenger.morel@neutralite.org> wrote:
> >> >> Pure ALSA works fine if you only need one sound at a time and don't
> >> >> need/want stuff like per source volume, and don't mind Flash sometimes
> >> >> messing up and blocking all access to the sound card.
> >> >
> >> > I think you are speaking about OSS here, not about alsa.
> >> > Alsa is able to play more than one soud/music at a time without problem: I
> >> > can perfectly play wesnoth with sound+music and have mpd running
> >> > background. (of course, I usually disable wesnoth's music, but not it's
> >> > sounds)
> >>
> >> Nope, I am talking about ALSA. ALSA can only play more than one source
> >> at a time with its dmix utility (ALSA itself is fundamentally unable
> >> to do mixing) , but I have never, ever seen dmix work at all.
> >
> > Actually, that depends on the hardware. If your hardware can do hardware
> > mixing (I know of at least one SoundBlaster that can, but I can't
> > remember which model at the moment), then you can play simultaneous
> > streams. But for most cards, you have to rely on software mixing (dmix,
> > pulse, jack etc).
>
> Ah, you a right, I had forgotten. But most consumer cards don't (Xonar
> don't, for example...higher end Creatives do, but I personally
> wouldn't go Creative for that), and I don't know if any onboard chips
> do.
My ThinkPad T61's onboard 82801H Intel HD audio mixes audio perfectly
out of the box (I'm using raw ALSA).
> Cheers,
> Kelly Clowers
Celejar
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