Simultaneous sounds with ALSA?

[Christoph Wickert]

Am Fr, den 09.04.2004 schrieb Andre Costa um 18:38:
> On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 16:59:57 +0200
> Christoph Wickert <christoph.wickert at web.de> wrote:
> 
> > > Agreed, but sometimes this is not an option ;)
> > 
> > Yes, but I think this was mentioned in my mail.
> 
> Sorry, I might have missed that.

No Problem. Maybe you should point out the difference between hardware
and software mixing more clearly in your article, for it caused a lot of
confusion on this list I think. So first step should be checking if your
card supports hardware mixing on
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/index.php3?vendor=All#matrix

> > Nevertheless there is NO REAL NEED to configure all the applications
> > as you did. In that case the oss-compatibility layer will do it's job.
> > 
> > I did not configure anything, so all my applications are set up to use
> > oss. I don't not what functionality I should be missing (well maybe
> > some Dolby 5.1), I still can have simultaneous sounds...
> 
> Now that would be cool -- I don't recall it working here, that's why I
> went after the solutions I posted on that HOWTO. AFAICS I have
> OSS-compatibility enabled; how can I check that? Is it simply a matter
> of configuring /etc/modules.conf? Any specific compilation flags needed?

Nope, it's only /etc/modules-thing: I have posted my modules.conf in a
previous mail, the important lines are:

# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
(alias sound-slot-1 snd-card-1  # if you have another soundcard)

Then set up your applications to use OSS (usually default) or alsa, if
supported. E.g I can run xmms with alsa or with oss output selected,
there's no difference (In fact I heard of people who had problems with
bad sound using alsa plugin. Also if you are using the on-screen display
in xmms it will show the volume settings whenever a new song starts ->
very annoying I think, so I chose OSS output.)
> 
> I would really love to update that article if I were to make it simpler
> =)
> 
> Best,
> 
> Andre

No, I think it's ok! Your article is exactly how it should be done, my
way is just for lazy one's :-)

Kind regards

Christoph