Hi, I have a realtek ac '97 onboard sound card. The problem is that whenever i am playing music using xmms, all other sounds, such as amsn notifications and others, are queued. This results in a buildup of processes ( number of processes increases in gkrellm). Also when i stop playing music, all the sounds are then played one after the other. Can anybody help me solve this pls? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am running Mandrake 10.0.


Mewt

Try to load the dmix alsa module, I think its name is 'snd-dmix'

How do I load this ? Sorry but i'm still a noob.


Mewt

open a terminal, ie: konsole or gnome-terminal. Write (the $ and # are the prompt simbols):

$ su
password: (<-enter root password)
# modprobe snd-dmix

Test, if all works ok, then to load it on boot automatically:

# echo snd-dmix >> /etc/modules

modprobe loads a kernelmodule. The echo commands simply print it's command. The >> appends the output to a file. And /etc/modules is parsed at boot to load modules, one for line.

When I try that i get "FATAL: Module snd-mix not found."

Is there a way were I can get it pls ?

Mewt

Try with the module 'snd-mixer-oss'

Dmix is an ALSA plugin, not a kernel module.
To use dmix you'll need to go into the preferences of each sound app and make sure it's using alsa output and change the audio device from /dev/dsp to plug:dmix.

hmm, I still seem not to be able to get any closer to the solution. I did do modprobe snd-mixer-oss, this this not return any errors. However ( at this time I'm still using OSS output plugin) there is still no soundoutput from central speaker :S. So I followed tormented's advice. I went into XMMS preferences, and changed the plugin to ALSA, also i cahnged the oputput device to snd:dmix. Still no output from central speaker, except that now XMMS exits for no apparent reason. So I tried working with Beep media player. With the module still loaded and OSS output plugin, There was still no sound. So I chose ALSA and put output device to plug:dmix. Unfortuantely there was still no output from central speaker and a deterioration in sound quality. Songs skip and there is interference. :S atleast it doesn't close like XMMS.


MEwt

Yeah! that makes more sense. I don't use it, because mi hardware is already multi-channel. Simply I was trying to help with something a friend talked to me.

I have found this document about configuring dmix.