[ltp] Problem with xmms and Flash

[Eric Jorgensen]

On 02 Jul 2002 23:25:54 +0200
Edi Weitz <edi@agharta.de> wrote:

> Hi!
> 
> I have a T23 and I'm using ALSA with the intel8x0 driver for sound. My
> problem is that xmms and Flash-enabled websites (no matter if I'm
> using Mozilla 1.0 or Netscape 4.79) won't work at the same time: If
> xmms is running and playing music the browser will completely hang
> when trying to play a Flash movie until I stop the music. And vice
> versa: While the movie is playing I can't restart the music. The Flash
> plugin is 5.0r48.

	This is a basic linux (really, *nix) sound access issue. 

	It's really the same as windows, it's just that bill gates didn't fix it behind
the scenes for you. 

	Deal is, currently with oss and alsa drivers, in most (if not all) cases, you
can only open /dev/dsp for writing one-at-a-time. 

	Most of the newer sound chips support a lot more simultaneous connections due
to the fact that modern sound boards lack an actual synthesizer and expect the
device driver to push instrument sounds at it. Largely, linux doesn't really
have an api for this yet. 

	The fix is pretty obvious and crude: You run a daemon that all your sound apps
talk to for all their sound needs. this daemon acts as a mux. 

	Your choices are pretty varied. You can use arts (which integrates well with
kde, allegedly), or esd (which integrates pretty well with gnome, allegedly), or
NAS, or a few other daemons. 

	Your apps must be able to output to the daemon. So in xmms, you'd choose "arts"
or "esd" for the output plugin, not "oss" or "alsa". 

	Truth is, I dunno if the flash plugin can output to 'em. Good luck. 

 - Eric

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