Re: [gentoo-user] netscape-flash and sound predicament
On 1/16/06, Abhay Kedia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Monday 16 January 2006 19:17, Michael Crute wrote: On the topic of sound servers. Being fairly ignorant about sound on linux (but willing to learn). Is there a good reason to use a sound server or am I better off to use ALSA directly? What purpose do sound servers serve? If you check out mailing list archives of sometime back, you'll find me asking exactly the same question. At that time I was using aRts with KDE, and was experiencing nothing but problems. I did not get any concrete replies to this particular question i.e. Why use a sound server anyways?. Just to see how things turn out, I disabled aRts and don't face any problems till now. I am using ALSA directly. The historical reason for sound servers was to allow multiple processes to generate sound simultaneously, and to have those sounds mixed together. For example, you wouldn't want to miss your new-mail notification while listening to music. But since ALSA now has the dmix plugin that works pretty well for those cards that do not provide hardware mixing, the only reason to continue to use a sound server is if you have trouble configuring dmix. The use of dmix is not automatic... -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] netscape-flash and sound predicament
On Tuesday 17 January 2006 20:02, Richard Fish wrote: But since ALSA now has the dmix plugin that works pretty well for those cards that do not provide hardware mixing, the only reason to continue to use a sound server is if you have trouble configuring dmix. The use of dmix is not automatic... It is, if you are using 1.0.9 ALSA. I did not do anything do setup dmix and it works fine. -- Regards, Abhay pgpUxPlSEsj7O.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] netscape-flash and sound predicament
On 1/17/06, Abhay Kedia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is, if you are using 1.0.9 ALSA. I did not do anything do setup dmix and it works fine. Ah, I see my knowledge of dmix is obsolete. Now I can purge it to make room for something else! :- -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] netscape-flash and sound predicament
On Monday 16 January 2006 09:04, Michael Crute wrote: So my question would be, is there a way to make flash mix its sounds in with the other programs on the computer? I know its possible as I have done it before but I can not seem to get it working now. A google search seems to get me nowhere. Any thoughts or a nudge in the right direction would be much appreciated. Flash still uses OSS to play sounds, and if you are using ALSA then it is using OSS emulation. I don't know how to do it with other browsers but I use aoss firefox to start firefox. This mixes sounds of Flash pretty well with any other sound producing app. I can even hear songs while Flash produces its sound in browser. A point to mention here would be that I am not using esd or any other sound daemon. Just plain jane ALSA with dmix. -- Regards, Abhay pgpMr35fpNrcC.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] netscape-flash and sound predicament
On 1/16/06, Abhay Kedia [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Monday 16 January 2006 09:04, Michael Crute wrote: So my question would be, is there a way to make flash mix its sounds in with the other programs on the computer? I know its possible as I have done it before but I can not seem to get it working now. A google search seems to get me nowhere. Any thoughts or a nudge in the right direction would be much appreciated. Flash still uses OSS to play sounds, and if you are using ALSA then it is using OSS emulation. I don't know how to do it with other browsers but I use aoss firefox to start firefox. This mixes sounds of Flash pretty well with any other sound producing app. I can even hear songs while Flash produces its sound in browser. A point to mention here would be that I am not using esd or any other sound daemon. Just plain jane ALSA with dmix. Thanks Abhay I will give that a try when I get home today. I assume aoss is part of alsa-utils? (I don't have portage handy to check this out at the moment) On the topic of sound servers. Being fairly ignorant about sound on linux (but willing to learn). Is there a good reason to use a sound server or am I better off to use ALSA directly? What purpose do sound servers serve? -Mike -- Michael E. Crute Software Developer SoftGroup Development Corporation Linux takes junk and turns it into something useful. Windows takes something useful and turns it into junk. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] netscape-flash and sound predicament
On Monday 16 January 2006 19:17, Michael Crute wrote: Thanks Abhay I will give that a try when I get home today. I assume aoss is part of alsa-utils? (I don't have portage handy to check this out at the moment) It comes from alsa-oss. This package gets compiled automatically, as a dependency, if you enable +oss use flag with alsa-driver On the topic of sound servers. Being fairly ignorant about sound on linux (but willing to learn). Is there a good reason to use a sound server or am I better off to use ALSA directly? What purpose do sound servers serve? If you check out mailing list archives of sometime back, you'll find me asking exactly the same question. At that time I was using aRts with KDE, and was experiencing nothing but problems. I did not get any concrete replies to this particular question i.e. Why use a sound server anyways?. Just to see how things turn out, I disabled aRts and don't face any problems till now. I am using ALSA directly. You can also try disabling esd and see how things go for you. If you face any problems then you can enable it again, but I personally don't see any reason to use a sound server. -- Regards, Abhay pgpc8sW0Tdbn2.pgp Description: PGP signature
