Arch Linux

zuchis

Member

Registered: 2016-07-05

Posts: 3

Programs blocking other audio sources

Hi there,

I'm a little beginner at linux configuration and troubleshooting... I've managed to fix some things by myself, but I'm completely lost on this one, so this is my first post on this forum

Some programs are making exclusive access to the audio output, in such a way that I can't play any other audio sources that doesn't come from this program when it is opened.

If I open one of these programs when no other audio sources are playing, the program takes exclusive access to the audio. Otherwise, if another program is playing some audio, this program simply runs muted...

I don't know what to do because it doesn't happen to all the programs so it is very specific.

Some examples are: Retroarch.
                                  Any stream of twitch.tv

I've tried to add my user to the audio group but this didn't change anything at all...

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance...

-zuchis

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,075

Re: Programs blocking other audio sources

Needs more info, what have you set up so far other than adding your user to the audio group (which shouldn't be necessary and will definitely not fix the issue)? Do you use pulseaudio? ALSA grants exclusive access to any application that directly accesses the hw device, if you haven't set up any ALSA configuration yourself you should make sure that they are configured to play to the default device (should be doable in retroarch, flash is another can of worms). Have you read through https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ad … chitecture ?

zuchis

Member

Registered: 2016-07-05

Posts: 3

Re: Programs blocking other audio sources

I'm sorry for the lack of information, I knew it had something missing, but I was very tired at the moment that I wrote this,

yes, I'm using pulseaudio (When I installed arch, none of the applications had sound at all before the pulseaudio installation) .

For some reason, there are more than one sound card avaliable for me to chose, I had to find the right one before the sound started to work...

Here are the card list, on /proc/asound/cards:

0 [HDMI           ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel HDMI
                      HDA Intel HDMI at 0xeb914000 irq 33
1 [PCH            ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel PCH
                      HDA Intel PCH at 0xeb910000 irq 32
2 [NVidia         ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
                      HDA NVidia at 0xeb080000 irq 17

And here are the sound modules, on /proc/asound/modules:
0 snd_hda_intel
1 snd_hda_intel
2 snd_hda_intel

I had to make a /etc/asound.conf to change the default device, had to change it to the PCH card, the file configuration is as follows:
pcm.!default {
    type hw
    card 1
}

ctl.!default {
    type hw           
    card 1
}

I didn't know about the exclusive access that ALSA grants, thanks for the info, I've read the alsa wiki page but just partially, when I wanted to change the default device, I think I'll read thought the complete thing, to see if I can find something related to this exclusive acess.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,075

Re: Programs blocking other audio sources

If you use pulseaudio this  changes the approach you have to take, remove your /etc/asound.conf install pulseaudio-alsa and alsa-plugins packages. After a reboot ALSA using streams like flash should show up in pulseaudiomixers (e.g. pavucontrol) as [alsa-plugin] streams that can be redirected to the correct card as usual. In addition to that you can configure retroarch to use pulseaudio for its sound backend and will be able to redirect it via pulse's tools as well.

zuchis

Member

Registered: 2016-07-05

Posts: 3

Re: Programs blocking other audio sources

Thank you so much for this, feels kind of stupid how simple it was to fix this. I changed the /etc/asound.conf to use pulse as its default, and changed the retroarch configuration to use pulse, now it is working fine.

Last edited by zuchis (2016-07-08 23:38:26)

alex.theoto

Member

From: Athens Greece

Registered: 2014-11-30

Posts: 307

Re: Programs blocking other audio sources

If your problem is solved, please mark your thread as [SOLVED]