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DrKillPatient

Member

Registered: 2011-07-28

Posts: 85

[SOLVED] Software mixing with ALSA

Alsamixer defaults to the wrong soundcard ID (0), since I seem to have one in the computer and another right on the graphics card. To get around this, I have to set it to choose card 1 in ~/.asoundrc:

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 1
device 0
}

ctl.!default {
type hw
card 1
device 0
}

At this point, only one program can use the soundcard at a time, so I added this:

pcm.dsp {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmix"
}

For some reason, ALSA still only plays one thing at a time. If one program's got the sound card in use, anything else will give 'device or resource busy'. What else do I need to add to use this dmix functionality?

Last edited by DrKillPatient (2011-08-19 23:53:17)

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: [SOLVED] Software mixing with ALSA

The reason is, your "default" pcm now goes straight to "hw" (hardware) without going through dmix first.

Here's my ~/.asoundrc as an example of using dmix.

DrKillPatient

Member

Registered: 2011-07-28

Posts: 85

Re: [SOLVED] Software mixing with ALSA

Thanks, that works excellently. I'll mark this as solved.