Howto: Happy ALSA, OSS, ESD, with Duplex - Sound Settings

[intangible]

I know it's been done before, but I don't think anybody has compiled all the settings into a single happy set of instructions.

This setup should work with most sound systems, it is from my Nforce2 setup at home, it makes everything work quite nicely together, OSS, ESD, ALSA and make your Mic work while sound is playing (great for UT2004!!).

These instructions assume you know how to edit config files on your system and add/remove packages on your own.

1. Goto System->Preferences->Sound and disable "Enable Sound Server Startup"
   
2. Install libesd-alsa0 which will remove libesd0, but that's ok.
   
3. Make /etc/esound/esd.conf look like this:
   

   [esd]
   auto_spawn=1
   spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 2 -d default
   spawn_wait_ms=100
   # default options are used in spawned and non-spawned mode
   default_options=

4. Make /etc/asound.conf look like this:
   

   # Set default sound card
   # Useful so that all settings can be changed to a different card here.
   pcm.snd_card {
        type hw
        card 0
   }
   
   # Allow mixing of multiple output streams to this device
   pcm.dmixer {
        type dmix
        ipc_key 1024
        slave.pcm "snd_card"
        slave {
             # This stuff provides some fixes for latency issues.
             # buffer_size should be set for your audio chipset.
             period_time 0
             period_size 1024
             buffer_size 4096
             # rate 44100
        }
   
        bindings {
             0 0
             1 1
        }
   }
   
   # Allow reading from the default device.
   # Also known as record or capture.
   pcm.dsnooper {
        type dsnoop
        ipc_key 2048
        slave.pcm "snd_card"
   
        bindings {
             0 0
             1 1
        }
   }
   
   # This is what we want as our default device
   # a fully duplex (read/write) audio device.
   pcm.duplex {
        type asym
        playback.pcm "dmixer"
        capture.pcm "dsnooper"
   }
   
   ###################
   # CONVERSION PLUG #
   ###################
   # Setting the default pcm device allows the conversion
   # rate to be selected on the fly.
   # duplex mode allows any alsa enabled app to read/write
   # to the dmix plug (Fixes a problem with wine).
   
   pcm.!default {
        type asym
        playback.pcm "dmixer"
        capture.pcm "dsnooper"
   }
   
   ########
   # AOSS #
   ########
   # OSS dsp0 device (OSS needs only output support, duplex will break some stuff)
   pcm.dsp0 {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "dmixer"
   }
   
   # OSS control for dsp0 (needed?...this might not be useful)
   ctl.dsp0 {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "snd_card"
   }
   
   # OSS control for dsp0 (default old OSS is mixer0)
   ctl.mixer0 {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "snd_card"
   }

   If you look, the first setting will let you select a different sound card as your primary if you have multiple sound cards.
   
5. Make /etc/libao.conf look like this:
   

   default_driver=alsa

6. Reboot to make sure all the systems startup correctly.

OSS stuff will still tie up the sound card, but they don't run all the time. Just configure most things to use ALSA and you'll be good.

Side-Effect: The Ubuntu startup sounds will go away, but i think the trade-off is worth it.

Note: If stuff plays a little static through ESD, in /etc/esound/esd.conf try changing
spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 2 -d default
to
spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 2 -d duplex

[i3dmaster]

[*] Install libesd0-alsa which will remove libesd0, but that's ok.

I did not find this pkg but I got a libesd-alsa0. So I installed that one. Wonder if this is just a typo...

[intangible]

It was a typo, fixed.

[i3dmaster]

It was a typo, fixed.

I tried it, but looks like it gave me a disaster. My screen resolution keeps on 640x480 after reboot and I cannot get it back to what it was before... its totally broken. I've noticed that when I install the libesd-alsa0 pkg, it told me that a bunch of pkgs need libesd0 but it still went ahead removed libesd0 and installed libesd-alsa0.... Even I replaced back the libesd0, the screen never came back... xorg.conf seems not changed, but gnome-display-properties can only see 640x408@60Hz... I need help

[RastaMahata]

what should I select in system > preferences > multimedia ??

Input: alsa ?
Output: OSS ?

[intangible]

Alsa for both

[intangible]

libesd-alsa0 should've taken over all the dependencies that wanted libesd0

It sounds like somehow something else got uninstalled, it's worked flawlessly on the three Ubuntu computers I've tried, I'm sorry you had problems. I just went through the install procedure again on another installation to make sure I didn't feed you bad info.

If you removed the old libesd0 first without letting apt-get or synaptic handle removing that automatically when you told it to install libesd-alsa0, that might have caused a problem.
Try seeing if ubuntu-desktop is still installed, if not, add it back.

[i3dmaster]

libesd-alsa0 should've taken over all the dependencies that wanted libesd0

It sounds like somehow something else got uninstalled, it's worked flawlessly on the three Ubuntu computers I've tried, I'm sorry you had problems. I just went through the install procedure again on another installation to make sure I didn't feed you bad info.

If you removed the old libesd0 first without letting apt-get or synaptic handle removing that automatically when you told it to install libesd-alsa0, that might have caused a problem.
Try seeing if ubuntu-desktop is still installed, if not, add it back.

I did not manually remove anything, I was just installing the libesd-alsa0 and it said a bunch of things like such such pkg is depending on libesd0... (I remember, gdk, gedit, and some other gnome apps) however, libesd-alsa0 will be installed... and apt did go ahead to remove libesd and install the libesd-alsa0 even that. Since apt did not get any panic on this action, I was thinking everything should be fine but...

[intangible]

That sounds like the normal procedure, are you sure you haven't upgraded anything else recently, maybe a kernel update or video card drivers?

[i3dmaster]

That sounds like the normal procedure, are you sure you haven't upgraded anything else recently, maybe a kernel update or video card drivers?

Yes, I upgraded kernel to 2.6.10--34.3.