First, a little theory lesson. Many sound cards have only one DAC channel and even more have only one ADC channel. This is the root of the problem. In UNIX, "everything is a file" and this device can only be opened by one process at a time.
If your card supports multiple DAC channels, this will either be transparent to the user or will be separate devices, depending on the driver. ls /dev/snd and if you have more than one pcmC.D.p file, you are in luck. If it's not transparent (and obviously it isn't) just set XMMS to use the non-default ALSA device and it won't get in the way again. If you aren't so lucky, then the mixing must be done in software because your sound card is too lazy to do it for you. On Windows this is built into the OS. On Linux it's not. The options are, in increasing preferential order, esd, artsd, dmix, and jack if you're really into it. Jack is by far the best solution technically, but for people not living and breathing audio it's more hassle than it's worth. I recommend steering clear of esd and artsd whenever possible, and in general steering clear of OSS when ALSA is an option. That leaves dmix. Do you think dmix should be set up out of the box? So do I. dmix for the common case should be set up with aoss so that all oss applications get dmixed. Maybe even so that all alsa does too by default. People who care enough about not having the sound software mixed (there is a quality and performance issue for sound nuts here) are the ones who care enough to hack their .asoundrc. Complain to your distro. See also this recent thread: http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/linux-audio-user/2005-March/021762.html And these: http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=DmixPlugin http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_ALSA_sound_mixer_aka_dmix On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 at 15:05 -0600, Matthew Frederico wrote: > Something I have noticed with linux, is its sound has weirdness. For > example, I am using XMMS, and in order for me to use Skype, I have to > shut down xmms. I can't play XMMS and talk via skype at the same > time. > > using Alsa and I8x0 > > I've googled for it, and can't find any answer that can conclusively > tell me if it can be done or not. > > -- > -- Matthew Frederico > http://www.ultrize.com > ---------------------------------- > $1 million dollars in donations for care packages for our troops: > http://www.troopwear.com > .===================================. > | This has been a P.L.U.G. mailing. | > | Don't Fear the Penguin. | > | IRC: #utah at irc.freenode.net | > `===================================' > -- .O. Hans Fugal | De gustibus non disputandum est. ..O http://hans.fugal.net | Debian, vim, mutt, ruby, text, gpg OOO | WindowMaker, gaim, UTF-8, RISC, JS Bach --------------------------------------------------------------------- GnuPG Fingerprint: 6940 87C5 6610 567F 1E95 CB5E FC98 E8CD E0AA D460
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