HOWTO: Hear multiple sounds using Both ESD & ALSA

[manadskort]

it's weird for some it doesn't work it works with every program/game for me

thanks for the great how to .

When the system is heavy loaded, the sounds starts to sound wierd on skype, and sometimes i looses the connection.
Isnt that wierd?

I would be very happy if someone could tell me how to hear xmms sounds at the same time with the skype sounds.

[McQuaid]

Hello, I'm going to post my asound.conf file if others are having issues. The main reaon I'm posting is, looking over yours Gandalf, I don't think yours is setup for fullduplex operation. The only mixing going on with yours is for output not input. Now, I'm definately not an expert on creating these, but someone who seemed to know a fair amount about these configs on #alsa helped me.

pcm.card0 {
  type hw
  card 0
# mmap_emulation true
}

#pcm.dmix0 {
#  type dmix 
#  ipc_key 34521 
#  slave {
#    pcm "card0" 
#  }
#}


pcm.dmix0 {
	type dmix
	ipc_key 1024 ## needs to be a power of 2
	slave {
		pcm "hw:0"
		period_time 0
		period_size 1024
		buffer_size 8192
               # format S16_LE
		rate 44100 ## not necessary
	}
#slowptr true
}





pcm.dsnoop0 {
  type dsnoop 
  ipc_key 2048
  slave {
    pcm "card0" 
  #  rate 48000
  }
}

pcm.asym0 {
  type asym 
  playback.pcm "dmix0" 
  capture.pcm "dsnoop0"
}

pcm.pasym0 {
  type plug 
  slave.pcm "asym0"
}

# 'dsp0' is espected by OSS emulation etc.
pcm.dsp0 {
  type                  plug
  slave.pcm             "asym0"
}

ctl.dsp0 {
    type                hw
    card                0
}

pcm.!default {
  type                  plug
  slave.pcm             "asym0"
}

ctl.!default {
    type                hw
    card                0
}

With this config, I can run multiple xmms's, beeps, rhtyhm or pretty much whatever while recording at the same time. You can test yours by running a player and then launching arecord from the cli.

About the rate setting, the person helping me with my config insisted that I don't need it, but when running esd, sound would be scratchy without it. Again, not being an expert on these things, I think it's beneficial to have the rate at your sound cards native rate, most cards are 48000 so change that if needed.

Also you might find sdl games no longer have sound here's a fix:

* SDL - now time to change behaviour of apps which uses SDL to play sound. SDL tries to use hw:0, and without intervention, it fails to open audio device. But SDL uses AUDIODEV environment variable, so it placed such file to /etc/profile.d/, example dmix_sdl.sh:

export AUDIODEV=default


and finally mplayer can be modified within the gui (gmplayer) but mplayer alone won't read that. Here's my ~/.mplayer/config
vo="xv"
ao="alsa:device=default"

The vo="xv" will set mplayer to use xv hardware overlay for video so most of you will want that as well if you haven't set it as such. I'm mainly use totem but it's nice to have mplayer working with this setup.

And the gstreamer-properties test with this setup will work for both playback and recording.

As gandalf said, with certain sound setups you might have issues, if so look at this page and search for your soundcard (it's where I got most of my info)

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=DmixPlugin


and here at the same site their quick n dirty dmix esd arts sdl how to

http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?pa...nd+dirty+HOWTO

My final comment on this is two issues. This works for 99% of apps out there, but some older apps don't map properly, for ex I couldn't get quake3/et and teamspeak to play nice, but this is because my onboard sound only has software mixing, those with hardware mixing shouldn't have issue.

The other thing is I like to use the gnome option for another user to login without logging me out. But running esd in the one login holds the card, so the other user gets no sound. Again not sure if this is the case with hardware mixing cards. If someone could test that out, I'm curious.

[Rehevkor]

Excellent how-to. Most of my games (UT2004, SimCity 3000U, Enemy Territory) required that I kill esd before being able to play with sound, and I always had to reboot afterward to get sound in Ubuntu back. After following this guide, the sound works flawlessly in everything. No more killing esd and rebooting! Thanks

[Gandalf]

Excellent how-to. Most of my games (UT2004, SimCity 3000U, Enemy Territory) required that I kill esd before being able to play with sound, and I always had to reboot afterward to get sound in Ubuntu back. After following this guide, the sound works flawlessly in everything. No more killing esd and rebooting! Thanks

no problem, just for your record, no need to reboot ubuntu juste type esd in a console will turn on ESD again

[dhega]

wee
Nice guide.

[manadskort]

is it just me?

I cant play music with xmms at the same time that im using skype.

[McQuaid]

Oh and for sdl games, install libsdl1.2debian-alsa

You could install the esd version but both will work and this way you can have sdl games work in another window manager where you might not be running esd.

It defaulted to libsdl1.2debian-oss. Not sure exactly why that doesn't work when alsa has oss emulation.

But really, can we not purge oss completely from a distribution yet?

[Jump]

Work great, thanks!

[Rehevkor]

no problem, just for your record, no need to reboot ubuntu juste type esd in a console will turn on ESD again

Well, I did that, but it would just play a series of pc speaker beeps and the interface sounds in Ubuntu still wouldn't play. It would only work if I rebooted.

Fortunately, I don't have to worry about that now

[nt7561]

I have a soundblaster 24bit live on board card. Is this guide working for it also?