Sound server explanation
 

Can somebody explain how to use sound servers like esound. I use blackbox as my window manager and my driver for my soundcard (snd-intel8x0) doesn't support mixing so only one app at a time can use the soundcard. When I start esd by the command line, nothing can use the soundcard. There is a little startup sound that plays when esd starts up however. So anybody who can explain to me how to get my soundcard to play more than one sound at a time would make me really happy.

Configure your applications to use the sound server. XMMS, for example, comes with a driver called libesdout.so which works great. Just choose that driver from the dropdown menu in the XMMS configuration dialog box.

Håkan

I did that last night after I wrote the original post. I used the esd driver for XMMS and mplayer and I was able to play both a movie and an mp3 at the same time using sound. Does gaim have an esd plugin? I'd like to hear a notification when I am busy listening to music.

I believe gaim has an esd output mode built in. If not, though, you can change the "Sound play method" in Preferences to "Command," then set the command to `esdplay '%s'`

thanks, it works fine now. I was wondering if you had to just start esd in the console and then all sounds that are sent to the sound card are sent to esd first for mixing and then to the card for rendering. That is why I was wondering about games and mp3 playing at the same time.