On Fri, 2008-05-16 at 11:20 +0100, J M Needham wrote: > Dear all, > > Forgive me for not understanding this, but I've also heard conflicting > things on Alsa-User. On my PC (old H/W, Ubuntu Hardy Heron, SB audigy) I > can play sound through apps connected to jack and apps going direct to > Alsa at the same time. On my Debian sid box, I cannot have two appps > playing music at the same time. My Laptop, running Ubuntu GG (s/c HDA > intel) also behaves like this, whereas my friend's PC can do what my > Ubuntu HH box can do (new H/W, SB Audigy new(ish)), and > both have been able to do this since we both switched at Edgy Eft. > > I don't understand this. Some people say that you cannot play sounds from > aps connected to Jack and apps not using jack at the same time, which > contradicts some of my experience and the experience of Joakim Hernberg > [below] so what's the difference? What files do I need to look at to find > the difference if there is any. > > Is this a h/w or s/w issue? It's clearly possible, so why is there the > belief that it can't happen? its both. there is some audio hardware that supports "multi-open" directly in hardware. i believe that your SB Audigy is one such device. this means that multiple (typically somewhere from 8-32) applications can open it, and the hardware mixes everything down to the outputs. this type of h/w has become massively less common as Intel-HDA has spread, since this "specification" leaves mixing like this to device drivers and/or some OS audio infrastructure. mixing JACK & non-JACK applications with audio interfaces that do not provide hardware multi-open is essentially impossible (or just so kludgy that i don't even want to discuss it). --p _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
