Kent West wrote:
Dave Thayer wrote:Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. It looks like Dave's idea will work well for us.On Fri, Dec 08, 2006 at 03:42:02PM -0600, Kent West wrote:We're wanting to use one Debian box to play two different audio streams to two different systems: one playing music-on-hold for our general telephone system, and one playing tips-and-updates for our Helpdesk phone system (for simplification purposes, you can just think of the two streams going to two different sets of speakers located in two different rooms).I figure we'll need two sound cards, each driving its own set of speakers.Since phone systems are mono, have you considered using the left and right channels seperately for the audio sources? You might be able to get by with some mixer software trickery to run L & R independently.I've started up two instances of xmms (had to go into Options/Preferences/Options and turn on "Allow multiple instances", and put one audio tune on one instance, and moved the balance all the way to the Left, and then put another audio tune on the other instance, moving it's balance all the way to the Right. Preliminary testing indicates that this will work.
You might make sure by cranking up the audio as high as it will go on both individually and making sure there's no cross-talk. I've seen some (cheap, crappy) sound cards that only have about -40dB isolation between Left and Right channels.
If this is a one-off, and you are good to go with your current setup, great. If you're going to try to accurately reproduce it, be aware that some (cheap, crappy) sound cards don't have much isolation between the Left and Right channels.
Nate