Dmix (Fedora Core 4)

[Colin Walters]

On Sun, 2005-01-16 at 16:57 +0000, Sitsofe Wheeler wrote:
> 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). 

We're trading one very serious, major bug (sound mixing not working for
anyone) for a few more minor bugs (sound mixing not efficient as
possible, doesn't work for 2nd sound card, etc.).  I'm not saying these
new bugs are not important - conceptually they are fixable in alsa-lib.