On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 14:13 +0200, Felipe Alfaro Solana wrote: > On Oct 18, 2004, at 13:59, Ralf Ertzinger wrote: > > > Hi. > > > > David Mohring <heretic@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > >> Even using the ALSA interface, Fedora defaults to sending/receiving > >> applications audio direct to the hardware device, hogging the > >> interface. > >> By default audio output could go to ALSA or better yet a Dmix plug, > >> where the source and destination could be selected and mixed together. > > > > Maybe I did not understand ALSA fully, but: > > IMHO you will need dmix only when your sound hardware is not capable of > > hardware mixing (like mine is, for example). If it was, you would not > > need (or want, for that matter) to use dmix. > > You are right... Some sound cards out there have several hardware audio > channels and can perform HW sound mixing of up to a number of sound > sources equal to its sound channels. For example, if the card has 4 HW > channels it can mix up to 4 simultaneous sound sources. > Ok, how about giving the option to deploy audio as either 1) Direct to card hardware Card set up as /dev/dsp hw:0 etc 2) Software Mix Dmix set up as /dev/dsp hw:0 etc Following audio devices set up /dev/dspX hw:X etc And the future kernel hack 3) Multiuser Software Switch a /dev/tty like switch for /dev/dsp hw:0 to each users assigned /dev/dsp hw:0 etc - either hardware or dmix device. -- David Mohring <heretic@xxxxxxxxxx>