On Mon, Jun 25, 2007 at 11:01:30AM -0500, Mike McCarty wrote: > Mike McCarty wrote: > > [that the sound card isn't working] > > Ok, after much fooling around, I find that ESD is running, and > has the DSP open. So, I killed it, it should be taken out and shot, IMHO. we see so many problems related to esd not playing nicely with others. > This is a work-around, not a fix, IMO. What is ESD, and > why does it interfere? It appears to be a sound server. yup. its the Enlightened Sound Daemon. It comes in with gnome, like a little parasite, and messes it all up. I don't know why gnome doesn't just use alsa and be done with it. I'm sure there must be some compelling reason, but I can't see it. Particularly frustrating (for me) is that if you like system sounds (which I do, for some stupid reason) you can't get them in gnome without esd running. If you set it to use alsasink (in gconf) it seems to be better as alsa allows mixing. But if you switch do a different user without logging out (my kids do this) then the second login doesn't get to use esd and thus gets no system sounds. ugh. > So, if that's the way things are supposed to work, then > why don't the apps use the server socket? because they have to be written to use it. Many of the sound apps actually have an esd plugin or some other method to get to esd, butyou're better off using alsa. If it isn't > the way things are supposed to work, then why is it running? to make you crazy? ;) > Or, if that's the way some things work, but not others > (like GNOME likes ESD, but other apps don't) then is there > some way to get them to coexist? I see that ESD is set > to release the DSP after 5 secs. Yet, it seems that it > doesn't. yeah, I've noticed that too. I have to say that since alsa started shipping with dmix by default, it all works *much* better. But its still confusing and is (to my mind at least) sucn an esoteric subject that its kind of all like blackmagic to make it work properly. A
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