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

[Suvayu Ali]

Paulo Cavalcanti wrote:
> On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 6:36 AM, suvayu ali
> <fatkasuvayu+linux at gmail.com<fatkasuvayu%2Blinux at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
> 
>> 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.
>>
>>
> How did you do that? I am using the same card right now and I did not know
> it was able of doing that. I know it has three different circuits for input,
> but you are saying
> it can do the same for output...
> 

At that time I was just starting out with linux. I was running XP 32 bit 
, 64 bit and F8 on the same machine. I was able to configure it like 
that for XP 32 bit after exchange of a weeks worth of emails with Intel 
customer support. It was a matter of installing the _right_ drivers for 
the card. As far as I recall I didn't have that working on F8 though.

Back then skype used the old OSS implementation, when skype was running 
it would hold the audio device and not even media players could use the 
device let alone multi-streaming. Since my use of multi-streaming was 
kinda skype centric and being a newbie who was unaware of the concept of 
mailing lists or user forums didn't have a lot to go with.

Trying to repeat that on my current system would be great though. :)

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.