I just installed the ALSA drivers on my notebook (Toshiba Satellite 5100, Intel i810 Chipset AC'97 sound, running kernel 2.4.21-pre6), and the quality is great compared to the OSSFree drivers. However...

I'm under the impression that ALSA can mix multiple software sound sources on a single piece of hardware, in the same fashion as EsounD. If this is incorrect, please forgive this post. Otherwise...

The problem is that, instead of mixing the inputs, the inputs are queued: e.g. When program A is using the soundcard, if program B tries to make a sound, that sound will not be produced until program A has finished with the soundcard.

If anyone can explain this behaviour, or suggest a remedy or alternative, I would be very grateful.

Thanks

You need to run a sound server to play multiple sounds at the same time. Alsa is a project that focuses on writing good sound card drivers (which they do quite well). You still need to use esound.

That's what I thought; however, EsounD worked well before installing the ALSA drivers ... but afterward, running the esound daemon causes all sound production to stop entirely. When I kill the esd, then sound begins again. Any ideas?

Thanks for the help.

You must make sure that esound is the only program grabbing /dev/dsp or whatever your sound device is. Try

% fuser -v /dev/dsp

This program will tell you what has a hold of your sound device (taken from the Sound-HOWTO).

ALSA has a dmix plugin, at some point in the future this will be available by default but it's still quite new. This will mostly eliminate the need for sound servers on Linux platforms.

Thanks everyone, I think I have enough info to fix it now.