I have had this problem as well.... and got some great advice.As far as I can tell, your problem getting the applications you want to use, accessing the same sound server.
Personally I have flash, Realplayer, xmms, gaim, and others all playing nicely together. One problem is that KDE uses its own sound server aRTS, while Gnome uses esd. I personally use Gnome, so I have the sound server start automatically in the gnome prefs, so this makes esd the default sound server if any applications ask.
If you are using Realplayer, you need to go into the prefs and set esd as the sound server, under preferences>Audio Driver Options.
For xmms, I have eSound Output Plugin set for outputting sound. HOWEVER, the cd player does not like this, so don't use it for playing cd's unless they are of mp3's (remember to mount the cd in this case).
And I installed the gnome-audio package, which gives you the gnome cd player along with some other audio software, and I use the gnome cd player to play audio cds.
With my browser, flash works fine with esd, but that is all I use or care about with sound cards, so I hope this helps.
I have not figured out how to get this happening with KDE. Anyone? hth, rohan sean finney wrote:
hi all, i'm getting tired by my many audio-wanting apps not getting along with one another, and i'm looking to switch to some kind of audio environment that allows multiple programs access to the soundcard at the same time. i know there are a few programs out there that do this (libarts, esd, ...?), but i'd like to hear from other folks and get their opinions for the better or worse before startingexperimenting myself.thanks sean