Some sound lag problems

[Ricapar]

When I open some games, I will often get this message:

ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:868:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave

The sound will still work, but it will be behind what is going on by about 2-3 seconds.

In alsamixergui, it said this for my sound card:

Card: VIA 82C686A/B rev50
Chip: Cirrus Logic CS4299 rev 4

Any one have any ideas what is causing this and/or how to fix it?

[BigCdaAnswer3]

Originally Posted by Ricapar When I open some games, I will often get this message: ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:868:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave The sound will still work, but it will be behind what is going on by about 2-3 seconds. In alsamixergui, it said this for my sound card: Card: VIA 82C686A/B rev50 Chip: Cirrus Logic CS4299 rev 4 Any one have any ideas what is causing this and/or how to fix it?

trying doing a:

pkill esd

see if that helps

[Ricapar]

Nope =(

I've tried "killall esd", "pkill esd", no luck. When I do "killall esd", it says: "esd: no process killed".

[varunus]

Can you post your ~/.asoundrc or your /etc/asound.conf (whichever one you have)? Delay problems can usually be fixed by tweaking these files.

[Ricapar]

/etc/asound.conf:

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
buffer_size 32768
rate 48000
}
bindings {
0 0
1 1
}
}

[varunus]

Reduce period_size to 1024 and buffer_size to 4096. Then type "sudo /etc/init.d/alsa restart" in a console. This will reduce the delay, but may make scratchy sound. If your sound is scratchy, slowly raise each value and restart alsa again until you find the right balance. I'm using an onboard intel 8x0 card (not exactly the best sound card) and those values produce perfect sound with no delays.

Good luck.

[Ricapar]

I did that, sound didn't become scratchy, but the delay and that little message was still there.

[varunus]

Hmm...do you only have lag in games? Which games are those? Do they happen to use OSS? If so, there's something you could try adding to your asound.conf...

Add this to the end:

pcm.dsp0 {
     type plug
     slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

and then restart ALSA.

Does that work?

[Ricapar]

Going to give that a try. The games I've gotten those thigns with was Quake2, ZSNES(any rom), and a few others I can't remember off the top of my head =(

update: Nope, same message, same lag

[varunus]

Hm...I did a little searching, and read on the ZSNES forums that it uses SDL for audio output. (I'm not sure about quake.) Do you have the ALSA version of SDL installed? Check synaptic...If you don't it might be trying to play through ESD, which can have lag.