Hi Dave, > ? My laptop includes a NeoMagic 256A/V audio/video chip, > i.e., no hardware mixing. So under normal circumstances I > get to use one soundapp at a time. Here's my > $HOME/.asoundrc file that gives me software audio > multiplexing : [...] > An example usage might look like this: > > ? ? xine -A alsa foo.mpg > ? ? aplay -f cd -D default foo.wav If I understand correctly, it does create some virtual cards based on one hardware card. Will ALSA assign each application a virtual card automatically, or does the application try all virtual cards until it finds a free one? Is the number of virtual cards limitated in any way, or are they created automatically/dynamically? > Performance is improved on my machine (a PII 366) if I > change the sample rate to 32000. At 44.1 kHz the little box > just barely keeps up whie playing a movie at the same time > I run a major soundapp. There are probably other > interesting tweaks, but this example might get someone > started in the right direction. > > I think the Windoze system audio mixer does the same thing > as dmix but rather transparently. It is a pain to have to > write a specific asoundrc file, but it's not an awful > pain... Unfortunately, the common user will not be able to do so, and to be honest, I'll need many hours to create an asoundrc for myself. Furthermore, it's a pity when dmix is only present on some single machines where the user has created an asoundrc file manually. There seems to be an interesting technology, but noone does use it. What about creating a shell script which helps us in creating an /etc/asound.conf resp. an ~/.asoundrc? It'd be great even if distributors woult use it as a backend to install dmix on every machine. > (dp thanks Takashi Iwai for explaining dmix to him over and > over again...) So thanks a lot for spreading his knowledge to further people ;-) . Best regards ce