I'm running Mandrake 10 community (beta). My soundcard is recognized, no problem, running module snd-intel8x0 (ALSA)

My mail program is supposed to play a sound whenever it receives mail. And it does, but only if I don't have another application (typically XMMS) using sound.

I seem to be incapable to use sound from two sources at the same time.

I understand that this could be solved using "mixers", and that KDE's sound system, ARTS, in involved. But what and how, I can't figure out. Any hint or help would be greatly appreciated.

Although arts is involved, it also depends of your soundcard driver. For example, my integrated nForce2's card default driver can only play 1 source at a time, so I get a lot of qued sounds when I exit a continuous sound stream program (like XMMS). A solution I've seen is to buy a card which has drivers that support various simultaneous streams like the Audigy for example. BTW, the Audigy is pretty much crap for me so I'd buy a Terratec or something like that but I haven't still researched about their linux support.

The same sound card, in the sad days where that computer was running XP, could handle simultaneous sounds... so it has to be something else...

It's in fact the drivers because I too get multiple audio streams on Windows XP. Haven't tried nvidia's drivers yet, those might help

You'll have to have Alsa configured, and the full suite installed, (alsa-drivers, alsa-oss, alsa-tools, etc) for the most part, but otherwise a multiple sound script can be made to work on a intel8x0 or snd_intel8x0 chip built into many motherboards.



/etc/asoundrc (or ~/.asoundrc userlevel script) :
#beginning
pcm.dmixer { #this is loading the PCM information into a software sound mixer (dmixer) which routes through the card itself
type dmix #the mixer
ipc_key 1024
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0" #The card location, for soem it may ve hw:0,2, (Using digital out I believe) but the default should work for many
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 8192 #buffers for 8Megs
rate 44100 #sound rate, CD quality,
}

bindings {
0 0 #Oss bindings, for two sounds at the same time, defaults should be fine
1 1 #can add 2 2.. 3 3.. ect till your hearts content, but the more you have th emore overhead for the bindings
}
}

pcm.dsp0 {
type plug #setting the dmixer as a type of plugin
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.!default { #placing the default from XMMS and mplayer to be the mixed output
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

ctl.mixer0 {
type hw
card 0
}
#end

Some of the information is not needed, but I was trying to point out what it was doing, options to use, and explain what happens