[SOLVED] Multiple Sound Solution (ALSA w Pulseaudio)

[jabeavers]

I've read several of the pertinent links and could not find what I need. Basically, I want pulseaudio to bind to only one output on one of my soundcards. I have an hda-intel 7.1 onboard card which I have split the outputs into individual pcm's (via asound.conf). These outputs will go into a mixing console. So, basically, I want to use pulseaudio to bind to one output for system sounds and flash movies on websites and stuff like that. I have a pro soundcard for low latency recording through jack, but I'm just asking about pulseaudio. I want pulseaudio to bind to only one of the outputs on the hda-intel card, and leave the others alone for alsa to deal with.

So, is it possible to have pulseaudio connect to only one device/pcm, and if so, how do I do it?

John

[jabeavers]

Nevermind, I'm doing what I need with alsa only. Thanks.

[marcoharder]

Hi!

I was just wondering whether you guys could help me. For some reason, my two soundcards [EMU 1212m and an ES1371 chipset card] are detected on the regular kernel [2.6.34] but only one appears on the RT kernel. I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop now and installed the Ubuntu Studio packages via Synaptic.

I've also already installed the necessary firmware and drivers for both cards, which makes me wonder whether I need to do that again, only thatI need to boot using the RT kernel. Please advise. Thanks!

MH

[BigJules]

Sometimes the easiest works: try putting a definite value into all of the columns of alsamixer. Seems if there's a value omitted in any of the variables it gets it all in a twist and can't parse the resulting string.
Restarting PulseAudio ($ pulseaudio --kill, --start) helps too.
Worked for me!

[ThexDarksider]

The "only one program at a time can access ALSA" problem has bothered me for about 6 months now, but I've finally found a workaround. Most certainly not the best, but at least it works. Whenever you open an application that "steals" sound from others (like from PulseAudio), go to System → Preferences → Sound, then click the Hardware tab, select the device you're using, change the profile in the drop-down box to "Off", and then change it back to what it was. That should restore the sound once again and make it available to all open applications. I don't know will it work for you, but it worked for me so I thought I should share this neat little workaround.

[mrz80]

My sound works OK for whichever user logs on FIRST to my Karmic laptop. However, if I switch to a second user (so that my wife and I don't clog up each others desktop, bookmarks, etc!) then whoever logs in second gets no sound playback, no matter what volume settings are.

Is there a way to workaround this, without the dogmatic suggestion that some other threads have of "just delete pulseaudio!"?

Thanks

I have exactly the opposite problem on my Lucid desktop box. The *second* user to fire up an X server hijacks sound from the first user, and the only way the first user can get it back is to kill the second user's session. Needless to say, this is a suboptimal solution to the problem! Any progress on the subject?