ALSA: dmix is certainly not default!

thoughtcrime · 2009-07-21 20:23:29

Hi! As described in the wiki, ALSA should use dmix per default. It does not do so, because I can't play sound trough a combination of two of the following:

flash (non-free)
mumble
urbanterror
audacity
clonk_rage (game)
vlc
mplayer

For two other apps (pidgin, amarok 1.x), I managed to set up dmix manuelly.

I've even tried to use the asound.conf provided in the article (under that not at all well placed big "note" section). Still it does not work and it becomes really annoying!

Here's the output of alsa-info.sh, which provides basically everything alsa related I think: http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=f6264 … f35318cc09

It would be really nice if someone could help me solve this problem, because it is not fun having sound only in one application.

Thanks for reading, thoughtcrime

whoops · 2009-07-21 21:15:42

- dmix can't help you if some of your apps prefer OSS. Did you disable it (blacklist + sure it's gone)?
- for some reason, setting a fixed & different rate (in my case 44100) helped me when everything but flash was able to play at once.

(edit: oh, I think those two have been added to the wiki page since I last looked, never mind)

Last edited by whoops (2009-07-21 21:19:51)

thoughtcrime · 2009-07-21 22:36:22

I've tried to change the rate now (asound.conf), but it didn't do the trick. Also I have oss blocked. I might try to unblock it and see what happens then, because on my previous installation on the same machine everything worked fine though. Thanks for the reply.

EDIT: it appears not to be blocked at all:
thoughtcrime / $ modprobe -l |grep oss
kernel/drivers/staging/slicoss/slicoss.ko
kernel/drivers/scsi/osst.ko
kernel/sound/core/oss/snd-mixer-oss.ko
kernel/sound/core/oss/snd-pcm-oss.ko
kernel/sound/core/seq/oss/snd-seq-oss.ko

although it says in my rc.conf:
MODULES=(acpi-cpufreq cpufreq_ondemand cpufreq_powersave fuse !snd-pcm-oss !pcspkr)
like the wiki recommends. What the hell?

Last edited by thoughtcrime (2009-07-21 22:44:30)

ahaslam · 2009-09-11 11:26:47

I was starting to go slightly crazy with this too. I have a desktop & netbook running Arch that 'just work' with alsa & dmix. This laptop however, seemingly didn't want to know & the Wiki suggestion of blacklisting snd-pcm-oss was no use.

Anyhow, testing dmix as described in their wiki showed it to work & then I stumbled across this post: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 40#p597940

I have no asound.conf on either of my other machines so I was doubtful it'd work, after a reboot all was good tho - sorted.

thoughtcrime · 2009-09-11 12:21:25

Thanks for your reply. It is working for me now though, but I don't really know all the steps I did. For SDL apps, it is required for me to
export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-07-21 20:23:29

ALSA: dmix is certainly not default!

#2 2009-07-21 21:15:42

Re: ALSA: dmix is certainly not default!

#3 2009-07-21 22:36:22

Re: ALSA: dmix is certainly not default!

#4 2009-09-11 11:26:47

Re: ALSA: dmix is certainly not default!

#5 2009-09-11 12:21:25

Re: ALSA: dmix is certainly not default!

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