can't play sounds from two programs at once.
 

For some reason I can't play sounds from two programs at once.

Example, I'm running gaim and xmms. If I run xmms I can't here anything in gaim, then when the music stops, all the sound get played. If I run skype, i can't here anything in xmms or gaim. I dunno why, is this an option? its very annoying.

I think everything is getting qued to the sound card, but doesn't play until others are done.
You should install something like esound

Configure your meda applications to use alsa, coz some of them use oss by default. On my system I can play my mp3's and hear sounds from GAIM e.t.c.

Ok, I changed it to eSound, still can't hear from two at once though.

did you try changin xmms to use alsa as I mentioned in my post above?

I had the same problem with my nvidia soundstorm audio chip on my giga-byte ga-7n400pro motherboard. Here is how i solved this problem. I went to ebay and picked up a cheap sound blaster live pci card. there problem solved.

I think NVidia's onboard sound chips only support OSS in their drivers.
Help?

I use some SiS onboard sound. Also, ALSA didn't help

i had the same problem... what i did was set everything to use esound or ESD.

so for xmms, go to options -> preferences and under Output plugin, choose eSound Output Plugin.
for gaim, tools -> preferences -> Sounds and choose ESD as the Sound Method. (didn't work when it was set to Automatic for me)

while i was at it, i went ahead and set ESD as the Output and Input in the Default Sink and Source for the GStreamer Preferences (Applications -> Preferences -> More Preferences -> Multimedia Systems Selector). Still not sure if this part is really required or not, i'm still a :newbie: myself, but it didn't seem to hurt either.

Yea I did that. ESD sounds like crap though. The sound quality is horrible.

*shrugs*.. sounds perfectly alright for me

set all to aRts not alsa or esd it's fine