HOWTO: Hear multiple sounds at once

[izmaelis]

I followed these instructions and everything worked fine except that sound in some apps (gnome system notification sounds, rhythmbox...) was very cracky. What's wrong?

[kurros]

Thanks for this HOWTO!

I had to use "-d dmixer" instead of "-d default" in esd.conf as well on my nForce3 board to avoid crackly/buzzy audio.

My problem is that Crossover Office using winealsa.drv still will not output sound if "Enable sound server startup" is checked.

Edit: Okay it seems that the -d default is the critical component here, as setting it to that and turning on the soundserver, ALSA works. I guess the problem we need to figure out is why it screws up the audio.

[baylisscg]

I can see why you would need to use 0,2 for your soundcard...some computers have the modem or some other device set as 0,1 so this would cause problems for you.. But having to use dmixer instead of default is kind of odd...I've never had to do that before to get clear sounds through ESD. (I've used this exact setup on several different computers...this is mostly needed with cheap integrated soundcards.) For gstreamer, do you have gstreamer0.8-alsa (I think that's the name of the package) installed?

0,2 is the SPDIF output. When using default all sounds played back through ESD were crackly. I did install gstreamer0.8-alsa but any attempt to point gstreamer at ALSA causes the application trying to use ESD to crash. For example if I set the audio sink to ALSA in gstreamer properites and hit the test button I get a brief tone followed by gstreamer crashing. This sort of thing has locked up gnome on occasion

As far as I'm aware the !default bit just redirects the card to the mixer, stop me if this is nonsense, so why this would cause problems is odd. If I direct audio directly to ALSA's default device, through xmms or alsaplayer, it plays fine.

DMIX is the plugin for ALSA that allows software mixing...it comes standard with ALSA, so I don't know why the ALSA website would say they don't support software mixing. This HOWTO is written mostly from the DMIX howto over at the ALSA site! Of course, that one goes into much more detail...

I read that and some of the other HOTOs but the whole thing is a bit of a mess. Right now OSS playes back though the analouge speakers and everything else through the SPDIF. Although, right now I have bigger problems so sound will have to wait for a bit.

[adroit]

I lost the sound completly..

I dont know why... I follow the instructions and check it... Now I dont know what to do for have sound...

please help me...

[Vaportrail]

I fixed the crackling by setting rate to 48000, my .asoundrc:

# ~/asoundrc

pcm.card0 {
type hw
card 0
}

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}


pcm.dmixer {
type dmix
ipc_key 1025
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"
period_time 0
period_size 2048 #1024 old crackling setting
buffer_size 32768 #8192 old crackling setting
rate 48000
}
bindings {
0 0
1 1
}
}

0 0
1 1
}
}


EDIT: OK weird! Having rate set to 48000 makes system sounds crackl and having set it to 44100 makes playing videos in xine crackl

EDIT 2: Finally got it without any crackls!
Changed period_size to 2048
Changed buffer_size to 32768

[kurros]

EDIT 2: Finally got it without any crackls!
Changed period_size to 2048
Changed buffer_size to 32768

Awesome! Thanks.

[stoffe]

This seems to work just fine, thanks for the tip!

Would be real cool if this was set by default, or at least possible to enable easily... this is usually a mystical and terrifying area to explore.

[piedamaro]

For those who have problems, should be noticed that everything works fine only if you use ALSA-based esd (for desktop sounds and mozilla) and sdl (for games). You should find them in the universe.

[RunningWild]

it doesn't work with me... i'm using the audio device that comes with my Nf7-s 2.0, and if I try your tips sounds in vlc, etc doesn't work

[piedamaro]

it doesn't work with me... i'm using the audio device that comes with my Nf7-s 2.0, and if I try your tips sounds in vlc, etc doesn't work

Vlc needs to use alsa outut to work, I haven't tried it, sorry.

If someone has problem with no sound in mozilla/firefox/epiphany with this setup on hoary, I've found that firefox seeks for libesd.so.1 at startup while there is only libesd.so.0.
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libesd.so.0 /usr/lib/libesd.so.1 should solve the problem