HOWTO: Hear multiple sounds using Both ESD & ALSA

[Gandalf]

Hello there,
This is just a clean and better organised guide of varunus's HowTo located here. So primarily all the credits go to him.

This HowTo will give you instruction on enabling software mixing, to avoid application problems like Audacity needing killall esd to work as well as Skype [now Skype will no longer crash if you receive a message or a call (when it try to play sound in fact)], so let's get to work shall we ?? .

1. We need to install libesd-alsa0 so
   

   sudo apt-get install libesd-alsa0

2. We need to create /etc/asound.conf, so
   

   sudo gedit /etc/asound.conf

   Insert into it:
   

   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
   buffer_size 32768	#4096
   			#periods 128
   rate 48000		#44100
   }
   bindings {
   0 0
   1 1
   }
   }

3. We need to change /etc/esound/esd.conf contents so:
   

   sudo mv /etc/esound/esd.conf /etc/esound/esd.conf_backup
   sudo gedit /etc/esound/esd.conf

   Insert into it:
   

   [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. Now You need to change ubuntu sound server to alsa (you can leave it ESD but better use alsa because it has better sound handling):
   

   gstreamer-properties

   Change both (in the Audio Tab not the Video) from ESD to ALSA so it looks just like the picture:
   

All that's left now is to restart your computer (after restart you must hear sound) to enable these changes. Also configure XMMS or Beep-media-player (or any player) to use ALSA instead of eSound/ESD. If you hear a strange sound, just change everything back to ESD. If everything worked correctly, now Audacity & Skype will work normally and all the program will play sound using either Alsa or ESD.

Correct beep-media-player configuration:

* If you couldn't play any sounds using ALSA then your /etc/asound.cond & /etc/esound/esd.conf needs some more advanced tweaking (or your sound card just won't support it).

* The codes above are to be done inside a terminal window.

Thanks to varunus for the original HowTo and to Vaportrail for the correct /ets/asound.conf contents.

Enjoy everyone .

[Xian]

Thanks so much for posting this. I'd given up and was using polypaudio.
The method you presented worked great!

[Gandalf]

Thanks so much for posting this. I'd given up and was using polypaudio.
The method you presented worked great!

no problem, i just made it clearer

[mostwanted]

Thanks! It works great.

[dukeinlondon]

you might find that realplayer still doesn't work after switching to alsa. this is because it is looking for /dev/dsp which is the oss device. Fortunately, alsa includes oss emulation. to enable it, just type

modprobe -v snd-pcm-oss

this will create the /dev/dsp device, routed to alsa.

Realplayer (and other oss only apps, no doubt) then works.

If that works fine, then just add snd-pcm-oss to the file /etc/modules

it will be loaded automatically at boot.

[nix4me]

excellent! Finally a fix for sound problems! Developers - Please fix it this way in the next release!

nix

[bored2k]

you might find that realplayer still doesn't work after switching to alsa. this is because it is looking for /dev/dsp which is the oss device. Fortunately, alsa includes oss emulation. to enable it, just type

modprobe -v snd-pcm-oss

this will create the /dev/dsp device, routed to alsa.

Realplayer (and other oss only apps, no doubt) then works.

If that works fine, then just add snd-pcm-oss to the file /etc/modules

it will be loaded automatically at boot.

It worked without that here.

[NeoChaosX]

period_size 2048 #1024
buffer_size 32768 #4096

Using these values caused my SDL games to go out of sync. If I use the smaller values, the sync is fixed but some videos have scratchy sound.

[kb00heda]

Gandalf:

Just wanted to say that your HOWTO worked for me too. Thanks!

[Gandalf]

Gandalf:

Just wanted to say that your HOWTO worked for me too. Thanks!

no problem