I'd like to get rid of pulseaudio but ...

[Tim]

On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 01:29 -0700, suvayu ali wrote:
> Most of the modern Intel HDA cards _are_ capable of mixing streams. I
> have owned one such card since 2007. Also most of the hi-end boards
> today support multiple streams. However I am not sure whether
> pulseaudio can stream two different streams to these sound cards and
> let it playback in two different devices. A very common situation
> would be something like a skype call on a headphone without
> interrupting music playback on external speakers.

You could only do that if you have two *separate* *output* hardware
circuits.  Lots of cards only have one output system.  They might give
you separate volume controls for speakers or headphones, but both
control the same thing (one output source), they just switch between
which control to use depending on whether you've plugged a headphone, in
or not.  Which makes more sense than at first seems.  

e.g. My laptop has silly little speakers that always need full volume,
my headphones work normally.  It's handy to set the level for each
appropriately, and not have to move the volume up and down between them,
just because I've plugged a lead in.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.23-78.2.50.fc9.i686

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