Hi, I'am not sure which sound backend you are using. As far as I can remember, ALSA didn't allow multiple processes to output sound at the same time.
With other sound backends, e. g. PulseAudio this may change. However, I don't have any clue, why this problem arises just after the upgrade. Best Regards, Holger Am Fri, 8 Jun 2018 16:33:45 +0200 (CEST) schrieb Roger Price <deb...@rogerprice.org>: > For nearly 20 years, I have had a cron job in which a dog (yes, it's > Biff) barks the hours. The lines in /etc/crontab are > > 0 0,12 * * * rprice /mnt/home/rprice/bark/bark.sh 12 > ... > 0 11,23 * * * rprice /mnt/home/rprice/bark/bark.sh 11 > > In the bark.sh script, the sound is produced by sox command > > /usr/bin/play -q hour12.au > > I have now migrated to Debian stretch but would still like to hear > Biff barking the hours. The cron job works well as long as VLC is > not running. But while VLC runs, the cron job waits. When VLC has > finished, I hear the barking. Is there some way of having the > barking while VLC plays? > > I can see nothing in VLC configuration file ~rprice/.config/vlc/vlcrc > which prevents others from accessing the sound card at the same time. > > Roger > >