xine "Audio output unavailable. Device is busy." - Firefox problem
 

When I play 5.1 films in xine I sometimes get this message:

"Audio output unavailable. Device is busy."

It seems that sometimes Firefox is using the audio device. 5.1 streams don't work because apparently they need full access to sound channels.

Unfortunately, closing down the youtube/whatever tab that is using sound does not make Firefox release sound. I have to close it completely.

Is this a "bug" or a feature in FF? Anyone has a suggestion, other than closing all Firefox sessions when I want to watch a movie?

It sounds normal to me. Each tab is a part of Firefox. The tab doesn't grab the sound device, Firefox does. If you install a FF extension for editing mimetypes you may be able to change the player associated with certain filetypes so that when you play, say, an mp3 clip instead of playing through xmms it'll play though mpg123. Whatever filetype is open in the tab you mentioned, choose a different player for it.