Dmix (Fedora Core 4)

[Sitsofe Wheeler]

On Sun, 2005-01-16 at 16:09 +0100, Ralf Ertzinger wrote:
> > for software mixing of multiple output streams (e.g. the case of playing
> > music while still hearing IM event sounds) which is what I'm thinking of
> > (although please correct me if I am wrong).
> 
> This works. Just tell the gstreamer system to use alsa as audio sink
> (Preferences->More Preferences->Multimedia Systems Selector)

Sounds good! I tried upgrading my alsa libraries on an FC3 box with
alsa-lib-1.0.7-3.devel.i386.rpm but it just caused sound to break on the
(virtual) console I was using (first it moaned about a missing key and
then after I thew away the .asoundrc file alsa support in ogg123 stopped
working and started spewing messages). I've downgraded back to the FC3
packages and sound works again.

It does appear that DMix software mixing will be on by default in FC4
for everybody (a shame for soundcard owners who have hardware mixing but
to be fair they are in the minority). Here's a link to discussion about
how some of the difficulties implementing it are being overcome:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2005-January/msg00011.html