Re: PulseAudio--is there a viable alternative?
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.
Cheers,
Kelly Clowers
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