Re: Sound problems in Gnome
On Fri, 2002-11-08 at 22:39, Vladimir Chalupecky wrote:
> To tell the truth, I don't understand the reason why I can't
> have this gnome sound server and xmms and other apps
> working at the same time? Could anyone explain this?
Because software mixing of multiple sound streams in the
sound card drivers are not implemented. The commercial
OSS drivers include software mixing (I think).
ALSA drivers only implement hardware mixing. That is, if
your sound card only accepts one PCM stream, only one
application can use the soundcard at a time.
Sound daemons attempt to hide this by having applications
connect to them instead of the sound device directly, and
perform the mixing in software.
So, theorectically, if all of your applications would
connect to the sound daemons (in the case of XMMS, you
will need either an esd or artsd output plugin), you're
set.
However, sound daemons introduces latencies and that's not
so good in games. Also, if your system is loaded, you
will get crap output.
Best bet is to get soundcards with hardware mixing. See
the soundcard matrix at http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/
and look for cards with the notation "(4)" in the Notes
column.
Either that or splurge for the Commercial OSS drivers.
Steven
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