All I want for x-mas is :: no more sound card is in use errors!

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Dec 24, 2007 at 08:09:38PM -0500, ted leslie wrote:
> It am almost getting to the point where I can't find any issue with new shiny
> Gutsy install. It dual monitors great with Nvidia card,
> plays just about any multimedia I throw at it (well except a bluray i tried, sound got out of
> sync pretty bad), etc,etc.
> 
> One problem I have, and have had in the past with other distro's is that
> some process will be using the sound card in a way that other processes 
> get blocked.
> I know at times in the past I was able to have flash (in browser) share with amarok, etc,
> but there is always some combination that doesn't work.
> In Gutsy, I have had no better luck.
> 
> Does anyone  have a linux configured that
> can have a flash plugin, music player, real player, and especially vmware
> (and the virtual OS in the vmware using sound) all co-existing happily?
> All technically playing at once, as bad as it might sound.
> Or is this not possible?
> The exact case in point is, the firefox flash plugin seems to grab and keep the sound card,
> even when nothing is playing, i'd like to listen to a podcast on amarok, listen to the odd
> wmv voice file in my email (company does VM this way) and then get sound from
> another linux (or rarely a windows image) in vmware -
> doing all this, without having to selectively shutdown certain apps.
> Keep in mind that N number of things might "have" the sound card,
> but only one is actually producing audio at a time (or perhaps a slight over lap,
> i.e. listening to podcast, and hearing a v-mail) the rest might be in a 0-volume
> or pause state, etc. and I just don't want to have to shut stuff off just
> so one thing can get its turn to produce sound.
> 
> I am hoping there is some sound/audio driver that can do this.
> 
> Here's hoping someone delivers this x-mas wish to me! 
> 
> I don't recall getting this in MS windows, but it been so long I am not sure,
> and as of 1-2 years ago, don't recall getting this on my MacOSX either,
> but maybe I never tried to much multiplexing, and I certainly never had the VMWARE
> part in the mix on these.
> 
> Right now I am just using stock ubuntu gutsy's default sound drivers (and setup).
> For sure I know that mplayer and vmware don't play nice together, and flash plugin and vmware (and amarok) don't play nice together, plus I am sure there are many  more combinations.
> 
> I hear all this talk about this new sound driver (server?) in the new Fedora, and its in 
> Ubuntu Heron (beta), and I am wondering perhaps if that address this issue?
> 
> Merry x-mas and a Happy New Year to all!

It is pretty simple.  Only use programs that support ALSA, not OSS.
Alsa applications automatically share and mix with recent kernels, while
OSS programs block all others from accessing sound (on most sound cards,
emu10k1 and similar do not block even with OSS since they have lots of
hardware channels and hardware mixing).

You can run oss applications using aoss as a wrapper I believe.  I am
not quite sure since I never have to do it given I use an emu10k1 and
hence have hardware mixing.

--
Len Sorensen
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