Arch Linux

creepytennis

Member

Registered: 2009-09-21

Posts: 7

[SOLVED] ALSA dmix (sound from multiple apps) only works for root.

Hi, sorry to bother you all but I really have drawn a blank on this one.

Using ALSA, I can only play sound from one application at a time. If I try to play audio from a second application I am told "Playback open error: Device or resource busy".

My understanding is that nowadays dmix should just solve this problem, but for me on this machine it is not.

However, if I log in as root, I can play from multiple applications using ALSA to my heart's content. dmix works perfectly. Just not for my normal user.

I have Intel HDA motherboard sound.
It is an analogue audio output
I am a member of the 'audio' group.
I have tried the snippet suggested here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ad … cture#Dmix and it doesn't seem to have any effect.
For some reason, I did not have an /etc/asound.conf. I had to create that file to try the snippet above.
I do not have this problem on any of my other Arch machines, just this one.
I cannot just forget about this and use Pulseaudio because I am developing an audio app and I need to test my ALSA support.

I have googled extensively and can find nothing else to try.

If anybody can suggest some more things to try or commands to get information about what is going wrong, that would be super helpful.

Thanks in advance!

Last edited by creepytennis (2019-09-09 21:08:44)

creepytennis

Member

Registered: 2009-09-21

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] ALSA dmix (sound from multiple apps) only works for root.

I solved my own problem.

I had a .asoundrc file in my home folder which read:

pcm.!default {
        type hw
        card PCH
}

ctl.!default {
        type hw           
        card PCH
}

Renaming this to .asoundrc-old solved my problem.

I don't know how that file got there. Perhaps an app installed it, as I do a bit of DAW stuff and try out a fair amount of obscure DAW and audio software. So, make sure you don't have an .asoundrc file, and if you do, make sure you know what's in there and what it's doing.