On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 14:28 -0500, Gain Paolo Mureddu wrote: > Lee Revell escribió: > > The problem you describe has been solved since about ALSA 1.0.9. > > > > ALSA uses software mixing by default for all devices that require it, > > and OSS apps must be run with the "aoss" wrapper to make use of it. > > Apps that don't work with this simply need to be fixed. > > > > Lee > > > I realize this, however as a sys admin I still have to struggle to > explain to users why popular applications such as Skype makes their > system produce no sound whatsoever or why do their media player stops > woking whenever they have open Skype or why do the messages stop > sounding when... etc, etc. That is what I meant. Not that technically > this wasn't possible. Still I've been unable to make some OSS > applications play nice with aoss (for instance the Quake3 game, the > TeamSpeak VoIP app, Skype, etc). Yep, it sucks. The impossibility of making in-kernel OSS emulation with the advanced features of ALSA is probably the #1 unresolved sound issue afflicting the Linux desktop. The only solution I see is to get these apps fixed. Skype and Macromedia (flash plugin) have been promising native ALSA support for some time now - maybe that will happen someday ;-). We should try to educate closed source vendors that OSS is not a reasonable option. You could help by trying to figure out why these apps won't work with aoss - there are a few open ALSA bug reports with lots of info already. > These problems obviously do not happen > with hardware mixing capable hardware (like aging and trusty Sound > Blaster Live! Value), and as such , we've decided to try and see which > commodity audio solutions support hardware mixing beyond ALi and some > VIA chipsets (BTW, does any body know if/when the Envy series of chips > will support HW mixing, or if they even do HW mixing in Windows?... I > was asked the other day about this) > I don't think anyone has designed a new hardware mixing device in years. It's all single-access with software mixing these days because it makes the hardware cheaper. The Envy stuff will never support hardware mixing because it works on Windows without it ;-) Lee
