2009/5/28 Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx>: > On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 12:08:37AM -0700, john wendel wrote: >> Kevin Kofler wrote: >> >It makes sound just work, without apps fighting for the sound device (or >> >multiple incompatible sound servers all trying to "fix" this fighting for >> >the sound device). No more annoyances like games failing to play sound >> >because some GUI event sound was still being played when they tried opening >> >the sound device. (I've seen, or rather heard, that happen way too often in >> >pre-PulseAudio times.) >> > >> >Most sound cards don't do mixing in hardware. A few do support it, but the >> >ALSA driver doesn't. Only few sound cards can do it and have ALSA support >> >for it. So PulseAudio is a mixing solution which works for everyone. >> > >> > Kevin Kofler >> > >> >> Strange, I've never had a sound card that didn't have a hardware mixer. >> And the on-board Intel hd audio that I'm using now does too. I don't >> think PulseAudio is evil, it just doesn't bring anything to the party. >> > > You're mixing up things :-) > > "Mixer" usually means the device/application you use to control volume level settings. > > In this context "hardware mixing" meant mixing up multiple audio streams > (from different applications) and all of them playing at once. > > Your on-board Intel hd audio cannot mix audio streams in hardware.. I think. > Some Creative cards can do that. > Most of the modern Intel HDA cards _are_ capable of mixing streams. I have owned one such card since 2007. Also most of the hi-end boards today support multiple streams. However I am not sure whether pulseaudio can stream two different streams to these sound cards and let it playback in two different devices. A very common situation would be something like a skype call on a headphone without interrupting music playback on external speakers. -- Suvayu Open source is the future. It sets us free. -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
