On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Frank Steinmetzger <war...@gmx.de> wrote: > On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 08:07:21PM -0600, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote: > >> >>> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's >> >>> how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default. >> >> >> >> Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so. >> >> >> > >> > Yeah, when you wrote dmix the light turned on about how KDE (and I >> > suspect most desktop managers) is likely doing it. >> >> GNOME uses PulseAudio by default, and since 3.0 is actually mandatory. >> I believe Xfce uses PA also, and (please, tell me if I'm wrong) KDE >> also by default uses PA. > > KDE has the phonon layer, which features a PA useflag, but also a flag for > gstreamer and vlc. > >> dmix *may* be able to handle multiple audio streams (in practice, in >> my personal experience, it always requires more work than PA); but it >> will never be able to do the other stuff PA handles. > > This seems like a dumb question (for I was a strict PA denier until recently > and have been using alsa-only since always), but does PA handle OSS > applications better than alsa/dmix?
I don't think I use any application that doesn't support PulseAudio, GStreamer or ffmpeg. Both GStreamer and ffmpeg can use PulseAudio as backend. Heck, even Xine-lib (which I haven't used in years) supports PulseAudio. That being said, PulseAudio runs on top of ALSA, so I don't see how the first could handle OSS apps better than the second. > Whenever I want to use sidplay, which only > speaks OSS, I need to stop all other audio programs (e.g. press Stop in the > Clementine player if it's only paused), or else /dev/dsp was busy. With PulseAudio I haven't had none of these problems in ages. But again, all my used apps support PA either directly or indirectly. Regards. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
