Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Sound card is only usable by one application at a time

["Jesús Guerrero" <i92guboj@terra.es>]

On Fri, 04 Dec 2009 23:47:18 +0200, App Des <app4des@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-12-04 at 00:36 +0200, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>> On 12/03/2009 11:23 PM, Yoav Luft wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> > On my dell Vostro 1520, with intel hda ICH9 82801I sound card
>> > (xSTAC92HD71B3, according to /proc/asound/card0/codec), only one
>> > application can access the sound card at a time. This probably means
>> > that applications access the hardware, and not some software mixer. I
>> > tried to follow information in the alsa wiki
>> >
(http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/pcm_plugins.html#pcm_plugins_dmix)
>> > for setting manually dmix, but couldn't configure anything working. I
>> > could find any good documentation (and I don't have plenty of time to
>> > dig in it, it's the middle of the semester). Does anyone can help on
>> > the topic?
>> 
>> I think all you need to do is to put the "alsasound" service in your 
>> default runlevel.
>> 
>>    rc-update add alsasound default
>> 
>> At least that's what I remember doing when I tried ALSA a few months 
>> ago.  You might need to reboot though so that the card is freed first.
>> 
>> 
> 
> I think it is best to add it to the "boot" runlevel intead of the
> "default".

It really doesn't make any difference, unless you have one init script in
the boot level that plays an mp3 file or something ;)

As said on my other mail in this thread, all alsasound does is to set up
the mixer settings (volumes and such), so, as long as it's started before
you want to hear a sound then it's fine. It doesn't really need to be on
the boot level, default is fine. But, in any case, this doesn't effect the
capability to do soft mixing at all. The problem is elsewhere.
-- 
Jesús Guerrero