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#1 2005-09-04 22:37:14

Gullible Jones
Member
Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

dmix refuses to work

My Ensonique 1371 doesn't work with multiple streams, and I've run into a brick wall trying to get dmix to work. Even with the libao.conf and asound.conf I found in the wiki, I can only play one stream at a time... If I'm using MPD to play something, then aplay, for example, will not work.

Even weirder: when I used it on my old, defunct IBM, I could swear the card let me play multiple streams at once.

Oh BTW, if you wonder why I'm using the Ensonique instead of my onboard sound, it's because the onboard stuff on this new machine has a ridiculously low max volume - not inaudible, but I have to strain my ears to hear it well - and I don't have a good preamp handy.

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#2 2005-09-04 23:44:45

Cam
Member
From: Brisbane, Aus
Registered: 2004-12-21
Posts: 658
Website

Re: dmix refuses to work

I could never make dmix work either. I just resigned myself to saving for a good sound card that does hardware mixing when I get around to it...

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#3 2005-09-05 00:33:10

Gullible Jones
Member
Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: dmix refuses to work

Damn. :evil: Well, then I'll try getting my onboard stuff to work.

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#4 2005-09-05 01:29:15

FJ
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From: Ontario, Canada
Registered: 2005-03-17
Posts: 75
Website

Re: dmix refuses to work

I wish you luck GJ.  Like Cam, I've had nothing but trouble with dmix.

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#5 2005-09-05 01:50:13

Gullible Jones
Member
Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: dmix refuses to work

Not even going to try... I've switched back to the onboard sound, but it has its own problem - see here.

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#6 2005-09-05 18:14:07

Gullible Jones
Member
Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: dmix refuses to work

Gah, futile! Why the hell can't VIA make onboard sound that's actually audible! roll

Okay... has anyone on this forum gotten dmix to work? I though that ALSA 0.9 had it enabled by default!

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#7 2005-09-05 21:54:08

tomk
Forum Fellow
From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: dmix refuses to work

This is something that I've never needed - I either listen to music or watch movies - but given your difficulties, I thought I'd give it a try. So I've just been simultaneously watching a music video in mplayer and playing a CD in xfmedia, and I could hear both tunes. The thing is, I still don't think I can help you, because I didn't actually have to do anything to make this happen - it just worked. The hardware here is a 5-year-old Dell lappie with a ESS Maestro 2E soundcard, so there's definitely no hardware mixing going on here. I'm running alsa 1.0.9, I don't have /etc/asound.conf, and when I did this the first time, I didn't have /etc/libao.conf. I've since created it as per the wiki, just to see if it would make any difference - it didn't. Similarly with ao=alsa in ~/.mplayer/config.

If there's anything I can tell you about my setup that might be useful to you, please let me know. Now that I've done it, I have one question myself - how do I change the relative volumes of the different tracks? The volume controls in mplayer and xfmedia both control the volume of the overall mix, not their respective outputs.

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#8 2005-09-06 07:03:55

Cam
Member
From: Brisbane, Aus
Registered: 2004-12-21
Posts: 658
Website

Re: dmix refuses to work

tomk: you could be running a sound server like arts or more probably esd. GJ, maybe you could give a client-server setup a shot? I hear Jack is exceptional but esd should be easy to set up. I've heard it's not the best but it might  hold you until ALSA gets something that actually works.

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#9 2005-09-06 09:04:53

tomk
Forum Fellow
From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: dmix refuses to work

Thanks Cam. I'll take that off to a new thread, since it doesn't seem to be related to Gullible's situation.

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#10 2005-09-06 21:08:14

Gullible Jones
Member
Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: dmix refuses to work

Tried ESD. It sucks.

JACK looks nice, but the whole setuid as root thing looks insecure.

Edit: Wait a minute... Just remembered something about the Ensonique having a second channel that shows up at /dev/sound/adsp, maybe that should be muted...? Also, I'll want to see if the new uDev version fixes anything.

(As I said before, I'm pretty sure that the card supported hardware mixing when I was using it on my old IBM - this might be a permission issue of some sort.)

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#11 2005-09-11 00:50:34

Gullible Jones
Member
Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: dmix refuses to work

Well, lookee what BZFlag gives me when run from a terminal:

ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:802:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
Couldn't open audio: No available audio device

And Totem:

ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:802:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave

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#12 2005-09-11 03:48:25

Cam
Member
From: Brisbane, Aus
Registered: 2004-12-21
Posts: 658
Website

Re: dmix refuses to work

Gullible Jones wrote:

Well, lookee what BZFlag gives me when run from a terminal:

ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:802:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
Couldn't open audio: No available audio device

And Totem:

ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:802:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave

Yup,  I just noticed I get these too when I was playing with gmpc-svn today. Not sure if it's fixable but it's probably a start smile

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