hearing KDE sounds while playing mp3s in xmms or mplayer

mihai451 · 03-25-2005, 01:24 PM

Hi guys,

I'm not able to hear the KDE sounds or any other warnings while playing mp3s with xmms or mplayer. I searched around but I couldn't find a good solution. I tried playing with the sound output configurations of xmms and mplayer but no result. However, after closing the audio player all warnings are played. Also if one application uses the soundcard others cannot.

Does anybody know how to fix this?

btw i'm on suse9.2, last kernel, kde 3.3.2.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

______________ M.

arjun_sh · 03-25-2005, 02:25 PM

I'm new to Linux, but I think you should see which sound system you are using. I use Fedora Core 2 and have a choice between ALSA, OSS, ESD ARts. Some of these allow multiplexing, and others do not ( some guy told me this, and I'm not sure myself ). Obviously, if your sound system does not multiplex, it will be unable to play more than one thing at a time. I've got OSS on and it seems to work. Of course I could be very wrong, but... no harm trying to change your sound system. Could someone shed some light here please?

mihai451 · 03-26-2005, 05:01 AM

I've pretty much tried to change the sound system, however didn't work. I played with Mixer0, Mixer1, /dev/snd, etc, change rwx permissions to things in /dev ..., none worked. I thought someone already figured it out so can walk me through these things.

Actually, I also talked with some guys that know lots of linux tricks and they told me to do what I said above. Curiously though, on their computers multiplexing didn't work as well. They said they don't care. Go figure.

arjun_sh · 03-28-2005, 06:36 AM

just curious to know what is your current sound system anyway.

ror · 03-28-2005, 06:42 AM

For me, setting the sound in xmms to ESD helped with a lot of sounds although there are still some problems.

reddazz · 03-28-2005, 07:32 AM

XMMS and other multimedia apps needs to be configured to use the alsa output plugin so that you can hear sounds from various apps at the same time.

db391 · 03-30-2005, 02:31 PM

Use the Arts plugin.
Because although there is nothing wrong with using Alsa or OSS plugins, both do not allow you to play multiple sounds through the sound card at the same time (KDE sounds start to play when you press the stop button).
Also ESD or Esound has like a huge 300ms latency

avoid esd at all costs.

bulliver · 03-30-2005, 03:11 PM

Quote:

Because although there is nothing wrong with using Alsa or OSS plugins, both do not allow you to play multiple sounds through the sound card at the same time

Gotta disagree with you there...

I am using ALSA and I can hear sounds from different apps at the same time. No I am not using Arts or ESD. (example, I can listen to music with xmms and still hear the audio from a game I am playing...)

db391 · 03-30-2005, 04:07 PM

Quote:

Gotta disagree with you there...

I am using ALSA and I can hear sounds from different apps at the same time. No I am not using Arts or ESD. (example, I can listen to music with xmms and still hear the audio from a game I am playing...)

Cheers bulliver for pointing that out.

I think Alsa does work (multi sounds) in some distros. I've had no luck trying to make alsa play multiple sounds in Slackware. (Gentoo masked xmms-alsa so i'm forced to use OSS

)

Also crappy Arts just keeps skipping in xmms when listening to digitally imported, and Gentoo masks xmms-alsa for some odd reason.

bulliver · 03-30-2005, 04:14 PM

xmms-alsa is stable on x86:
http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=xmms-alsa

You using amd64 or something? Edit: well it's stable for amd64 too, are you using ~x86 version of xmms?

I am using gentoo and have xmms-alsa installed no prob...

Haiyadragon · 03-31-2005, 02:07 AM

To have alsa mix multiple audio streams: make a file '/etc/asound.conf' (global) or '$HOME/.asoundrc' (user specific) and put the following in it:

Code:

pcm.dmix0 {
  type                  dmix
  ipc_key               673138

  slave {
    pcm                 "hw:0,0"

    rate                48000

    period_time         80000
    buffer_time         320000

    period_size         4096
    buffer_size         16384
  }

  bindings {
    0                   0
    1                   1
  }
}

# 'dsp0' is espected by OSS emulation etc.
pcm.dsp0 {
  type                  plug
  slave.pcm             "dmix0"
}

ctl.dsp0 {
    type                hw
    card                0
}

pcm.!default {
  type                  plug
  slave.pcm             "dmix0"
}

ctl.!default {
    type                hw
    card                0
}

ctl.mixer {
    type hw
    card 0
}

Now you can use alsa, arts and esound all at the same time (but who would want that

). Not OSS though, OSS claims sole use of the device.