[ltp] Sound devices (alsa,dmix, and dev/dsp)

[Martin Heimburger]

This may not work with more complex OSS-based applications, but I've had
some success with the following method (e.g. gets realplayer to use
ALSA/dmix rather than blocking the /dev/dsp device):

LD_PRELOAD="$LD_PRELOAD:/usr/lib/libaoss.so" your_application

(requires the alsa-oss package - or whatever Mandriva likes to call it)

Hope that helps,

Martin
from that 'other' place... :)

Am Freitag, den 18.11.2005, 04:53 +0000 schrieb Richard Neill:
> Dear All,
> 
> In Mandriva 2006, the alsa dmix plugin is enabled by default. This means 
> that any applications which use ALSA as the output (and not artsd or 
> oss) can happily co-exist.
> 
> This works great if for example, you want to hear sounds from system 
> notifications at the same time as playing a sound, or you want (for some 
> crazy reason!) to play 2 mp3s simultaneously, or just generally to make 
> sure that 2 applications don't fight to the death over the sound card.
> 
> However, even though the sound driver is ALSA, the /dev/dsp device is 
> not mixed. So any of the older programs (eg /usr/bin/play) can block all 
> the alsa programs.
> 
> My question is: is there any way to change the oss emulation, so that 
> multiple instances of /dev/dsp can be opened simultaneously? Why can't 
> alsa transparently do what it does with dmix, but with /dev/dsp ?
> 
> Yes, I know about artsd, but artsd adds lots of startup latency, and 
> there is also soundwrapper, but it seems to crash lots.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Richard
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> rn214@hermes.cam.ac.uk  **  http://www.richardneill.org
> Richard Neill, Trinity College, Cambridge, CB21TQ, U.K.