Arch Linux

tylerpnn

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 20

Only one application is able to play sound at a time.

I installed arch on my desktop a couple weeks ago (finally 100% windows free ), but I've been having the hardest time getting audio working flawlessly.

At first I was having problems using the correct sound card as default, but It seems I have that working now. I can get sound to play, but only 1 application can access the sound card at the same time. If I have spotify playing and I try to play a youtube video in browser, the video will play for a few seconds with no sound and then completely crash. If I pause spotify and refresh the youtube page, the video will play. And also, while a youtube video or anything else is playing, any other application will refuse to play sound.

I guess this is an issue with ALSA. My sound card seems to be blocking other sources.

If I run speaker-test while something is playing I get this output:

speaker-test 1.0.27.2

Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 1 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Playback open error: -16,Device or resource busy

And for possible helpful information, here is the output of aplay -l

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: ALC892 Digital [ALC892 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1

Also, this is what I have put in /etc/asound.conf in order to get my sound card to load as default (just in case I've done something wrong here):

pcm.!default {
	type hw
	card PCH
}

ctl.!default {
	type hw           
	card PCH
}

So what am I missing here?

Last edited by tylerpnn (2014-03-29 04:54:00)

tylerpnn

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 20

Re: Only one application is able to play sound at a time.

As always happens when I have issues, I try to solve it myself for hours on end, finally swallow my pride and post on the forums, and then find the solution on my own an hour later.

Found the solution here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 003#p70003

I took the asound.conf that iphitus posted and changed the ctl.dmixer to use my sound card, which is PCH as determined by asound -l.

here is my asound.conf:

#/etc/asound.conf start:
pcm.!default {
  type plug
  slave.pcm "dmixer"
  }
pcm.dsp0 {
  type plug
  slave.pcm "dmixer"
  }
pcm.dmixer {
  type dmix
  ipc_key 1024
 slave {
  pcm "hw:0,0"
  period_time 0
  period_size 1024
 buffer_size 8192
  rate 44100
  }
 bindings {
  0 0
  1 1
  }
  }

ctl.dmixer {
  type hw
  card PCH
  }

Last edited by tylerpnn (2014-03-29 06:01:42)

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Only one application is able to play sound at a time.

Please remember to mark the thread as solved https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=130309