playing other sound while mpd is playing

unhammer · 2011-08-25 07:59:54

I'm trying to follow https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AL … _at_a_Time in order to be able to hear other sounds while mpd is playing (mpd is running as the user mpd), e.g. running aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav as my user while a song is playing as mpd, or starting mpd while some youtube movie is playing. At the moment, that aplay will be silent, or, respectively, mpd will be silent (until a while after exiting Flash).

I'm pretty sure it's the multiple-user problem since I can play youtube and then hear aplay while youtube is playing. If I play from mpd first, I have to do `pulseaudio -k` before starting aplay/Flash.

I have the following relevant packages installed:

local/lib32-libpulse 0.9.23-1
local/libao 1.1.0-1
local/libcanberra-pulse 0.28-1
local/libpulse 0.9.23-1
local/pulseaudio 0.9.23-1
local/pulseaudio-alsa 1-2 (pulseaudio-gnome)
local/alsa-lib 1.0.24.1-1
local/alsa-oss 1.0.17-1
local/alsa-plugins 1.0.24-2
local/alsa-utils 1.0.24.2-3
local/lib32-alsa-lib 1.0.24.1-1
local/lib32-alsa-plugins 1.0.24-1

My /etc/mpd.conf: http://paste.pocoo.org/raw/464111/

My aplay -l output: http://paste.pocoo.org/raw/464115/

My /etc/asound.conf looked like this before: http://paste.pocoo.org/raw/464112/
I tried changing it to both http://paste.pocoo.org/raw/464113/ and http://paste.pocoo.org/raw/464114/ (all the time running

sudo /etc/rc.d/alsa force-restart && sudo /etc/rc.d/alsa restart && pulseaudio -k && sudo /etc/rc.d/mpd restart

between each edit to test), but no luck. Anyone know what I should be doing?

Last edited by unhammer (2011-08-25 08:03:25)

ngoonee · 2011-08-25 09:45:37

First of all, restarting alsa doesn't do anything except saving volumes etc. And pulseaudio multi-user at the same time isn't its targetted use case, you'd be better off running mpd as your own user.

unhammer · 2011-08-25 12:09:17

OK, I guess I have a bit to learn about the whole pulseaudio vs alsa deal. Thanks for the help

pigiron · 2011-08-25 22:45:58

According to the folks here:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 38#p976338

the key is putting

mixer_type "software"

in the MPD config file.

Might give it a try... who knows???

unhammer · 2011-08-26 11:12:04

pigiron wrote:

According to the folks here:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 38#p976338
the key is putting
mixer_type "software"
in the MPD config file.
Might give it a try... who knows???

Already have that ;-)

The problem seems to be that I have PulseAudio, which should only be run by one user at a time, and needs full control of the sound card. So my solution seems to be to either do without PulseAudio (not sure if that will screw up other stuff, or what), or run mpd as my own user.

unhammer · 2011-09-02 07:34:30

I did finally switch mpd over to my own user, also installed the veromix plasmoid, and now I finally see the point of PulseAudio, being able to turn up and down Flash or MPD or whatever individually is great

Now I don't need the mixer_type software, nor the ALSA output. My mpd.conf looks like http://paste.pocoo.org/show/468783/ (the pid file is in /var/run/mpd/mpd.pid so that I can use /etc/rc.d/mpd to start mpd on boot)

(Also: http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/KDE is great for debugging PulseAudio)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-08-25 07:59:54

playing other sound while mpd is playing

#2 2011-08-25 09:45:37

Re: playing other sound while mpd is playing

#3 2011-08-25 12:09:17

Re: playing other sound while mpd is playing

#4 2011-08-25 22:45:58

Re: playing other sound while mpd is playing

#5 2011-08-26 11:12:04

Re: playing other sound while mpd is playing

#6 2011-09-02 07:34:30

Re: playing other sound while mpd is playing

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