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

[suvayu ali]

2009/5/30 Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au>:
> 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.
>

I first used this on an Intel 975XBX2 workstation board I bought in
2007. It _is_ capable of multi-streaming, I could set up my drivers to
present to the apps as two different output devices. So I had skype
configured to use the front jacks and I used the rear jacks to stream
to the line-in of my home entertainment system.

So much so, I even had skype ring through the rear jacks so that I
could hear even if I didn't have my headphones on but the call itself
would use the headphones connected to the front jacks. And I never
paused my music palyback during skype calls, I always turned it down
rather than stop. (I'm kind of a music addict :) ) My current board is
a Gigabyte board with a Realtek audio chipset with similar
multi-streaming capabilities. However for some other (unrelated)
unsolvable reasons, I have not done this setup yet.

Both of these are integrated audio chips. To get this working all you
need are proper drivers. Hardware is _not_ the bottleneck here.

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.