[gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[Willie Matthews]

Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?

-- 

Willie Matthews
matthews.willie@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[Mark Knecht]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Willie Matthews
<matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>
> --
>
> Willie Matthews
> matthews.willie@gmail.com
>

Jack handles multiple streams very well but it's difficult to use if
you're not willing to invest a lot of time and not all apps support
it.

I've never used pulseaudio so I cannot speak to that personally.

I also wonder what KDE is doing under the hood. I use multiple VMs all
day long - both VMWare Player and Virtualbox. I get audio from both of
those at the same time, as well as from Firefox or xine running native
in Linux, so I'm doing multiple streams and mixing them in KDE all
automatically. I've never studied how KDE does it, but empirically it
certainly can do multiple streams.

HTH,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[Juan Diego Tascón]

You should check airfoil [1]. It's a multiplatform sound system but
it's not open source. Haven't actually tried it myself as pulseaudio
fits my needs.

** refs:

[1] http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Willie Matthews
> <matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
>> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>>
>> --
>>
>> Willie Matthews
>> matthews.willie@gmail.com
>>
>
> Jack handles multiple streams very well but it's difficult to use if
> you're not willing to invest a lot of time and not all apps support
> it.
>
> I've never used pulseaudio so I cannot speak to that personally.
>
> I also wonder what KDE is doing under the hood. I use multiple VMs all
> day long - both VMWare Player and Virtualbox. I get audio from both of
> those at the same time, as well as from Firefox or xine running native
> in Linux, so I'm doing multiple streams and mixing them in KDE all
> automatically. I've never studied how KDE does it, but empirically it
> certainly can do multiple streams.
>
> HTH,
> Mark
>

Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[Juan Diego Tascón]

no, I missunderstood what it is for, airfoil can only play streams
from windows or mac, the output could be linux though, but anyways it
isn't what you are looking for.

2012/2/27 Juan Diego Tascón <juantascon@gmail.com>:
> You should check airfoil [1]. It's a multiplatform sound system but
> it's not open source. Haven't actually tried it myself as pulseaudio
> fits my needs.
>
> ** refs:
>
> [1] http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/
>
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Willie Matthews
>> <matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
>>> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Willie Matthews
>>> matthews.willie@gmail.com
>>>
>>
>> Jack handles multiple streams very well but it's difficult to use if
>> you're not willing to invest a lot of time and not all apps support
>> it.
>>
>> I've never used pulseaudio so I cannot speak to that personally.
>>
>> I also wonder what KDE is doing under the hood. I use multiple VMs all
>> day long - both VMWare Player and Virtualbox. I get audio from both of
>> those at the same time, as well as from Firefox or xine running native
>> in Linux, so I'm doing multiple streams and mixing them in KDE all
>> automatically. I've never studied how KDE does it, but empirically it
>> certainly can do multiple streams.
>>
>> HTH,
>> Mark
>>

Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[Paul Hartman]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews
<matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?

alsa dmix

[gentoo-user] Re: What is the best audio system?

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 27/02/12 23:50, Willie Matthews wrote:
> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?

Plain ALSA?  Or OSSv4?  Both handle multiple audio streams just fine.

Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[Mark Knecht]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews
> <matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
>> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>
> alsa dmix
>

Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.

Cheers,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[Paul Hartman]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews
>> <matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
>>> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>>
>> alsa dmix
>>
>
> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
> how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.

Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so.

Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[Mark Knecht]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Paul Hartman
>> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews
>>> <matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
>>>> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>>>
>>> alsa dmix
>>>
>>
>> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
>> how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.
>
> Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so.
>

Yeah, when you wrote dmix the light turned on about how KDE (and I
suspect most desktop managers) is likely doing it.

- Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Paul Hartman
>>> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews
>>>> <matthews.willie@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
>>>>> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>>>>
>>>> alsa dmix
>>>>
>>>
>>> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
>>> how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.
>>
>> Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so.
>>
>
> Yeah, when you wrote dmix the light turned on about how KDE (and I
> suspect most desktop managers) is likely doing it.

GNOME uses PulseAudio by default, and since 3.0 is actually mandatory.
I believe Xfce uses PA also, and (please, tell me if I'm wrong) KDE
also by default uses PA.

Jack (according to the PA maintainers) is for professional audio processing.

And please keep in mind that PulseAudio is so much more than "multiple
audio streams". It's per-application volume control, seamlessly moving
audio streams from one audio card to another, and really easy
management of things like USB soundcards and bluetooth headsets.

dmix *may* be able to handle multiple audio streams (in practice, in
my personal experience, it always requires more work than PA); but it
will never be able to do the other stuff PA handles.

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

[gentoo-user] Re: What is the best audio system?

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 28/02/12 04:07, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Mark Knecht<markknecht@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Paul Hartman
>> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Mark Knecht<markknecht@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Paul Hartman
>>>> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews
>>>>> <matthews.willie@gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>>>> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there something
>>>>>> else out there that can handle multiple audio streams?
>>>>>
>>>>> alsa dmix
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
>>>> how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.
>>>
>>> Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so.
>>>
>>
>> Yeah, when you wrote dmix the light turned on about how KDE (and I
>> suspect most desktop managers) is likely doing it.
>
> GNOME uses PulseAudio by default, and since 3.0 is actually mandatory.
> I believe Xfce uses PA also, and (please, tell me if I'm wrong) KDE
> also by default uses PA.

Nope.  KDE uses whatever is supported by the Phonon backend.  The 
default is GStreamer, meaning that whatever GStreamer uses, KDE uses too.

Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 08:07:21PM -0600, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:

> >>> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
> >>> how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.
> >>
> >> Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so.
> >>
> >
> > Yeah, when you wrote dmix the light turned on about how KDE (and I
> > suspect most desktop managers) is likely doing it.
> 
> GNOME uses PulseAudio by default, and since 3.0 is actually mandatory.
> I believe Xfce uses PA also, and (please, tell me if I'm wrong) KDE
> also by default uses PA.

KDE has the phonon layer, which features a PA useflag, but also a flag for
gstreamer and vlc.

> dmix *may* be able to handle multiple audio streams (in practice, in
> my personal experience, it always requires more work than PA); but it
> will never be able to do the other stuff PA handles.

This seems like a dumb question (for I was a strict PA denier until recently
and have been using alsa-only since always), but does PA handle OSS
applications better than alsa/dmix? Whenever I want to use sidplay, which only
speaks OSS, I need to stop all other audio programs (e.g. press Stop in the
Clementine player if it's only paused), or else /dev/dsp was busy.
-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla'
I forbid any use of my email addresses with Facebook services.

Disarm! Or else...

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[gentoo-user] Re: What is the best audio system?

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 28/02/12 04:30, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 08:07:21PM -0600, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
>
>>>>> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
>>>>> how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.
>>>>
>>>> Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yeah, when you wrote dmix the light turned on about how KDE (and I
>>> suspect most desktop managers) is likely doing it.
>>
>> GNOME uses PulseAudio by default, and since 3.0 is actually mandatory.
>> I believe Xfce uses PA also, and (please, tell me if I'm wrong) KDE
>> also by default uses PA.
>
> KDE has the phonon layer, which features a PA useflag, but also a flag for
> gstreamer and vlc.

These are not related though.  PA is not a substitute for gstreamer or vlc.

[gentoo-user] Re: What is the best audio system?

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 28/02/12 04:30, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 08:07:21PM -0600, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
>
>>>>> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
>>>>> how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.
>>>>
>>>> Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yeah, when you wrote dmix the light turned on about how KDE (and I
>>> suspect most desktop managers) is likely doing it.
>>
>> GNOME uses PulseAudio by default, and since 3.0 is actually mandatory.
>> I believe Xfce uses PA also, and (please, tell me if I'm wrong) KDE
>> also by default uses PA.
>
> KDE has the phonon layer, which features a PA useflag, but also a flag for
> gstreamer and vlc.

These are not related though.  PA is not a substitute for gstreamer or vlc.

Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7@gmx.de> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 08:07:21PM -0600, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
>
>> >>> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
>> >>> how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.
>> >>
>> >> Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so.
>> >>
>> >
>> > Yeah, when you wrote dmix the light turned on about how KDE (and I
>> > suspect most desktop managers) is likely doing it.
>>
>> GNOME uses PulseAudio by default, and since 3.0 is actually mandatory.
>> I believe Xfce uses PA also, and (please, tell me if I'm wrong) KDE
>> also by default uses PA.
>
> KDE has the phonon layer, which features a PA useflag, but also a flag for
> gstreamer and vlc.
>
>> dmix *may* be able to handle multiple audio streams (in practice, in
>> my personal experience, it always requires more work than PA); but it
>> will never be able to do the other stuff PA handles.
>
> This seems like a dumb question (for I was a strict PA denier until recently
> and have been using alsa-only since always), but does PA handle OSS
> applications better than alsa/dmix?

I don't think I use any application that doesn't support PulseAudio,
GStreamer or ffmpeg. Both GStreamer and ffmpeg can use PulseAudio as
backend. Heck, even Xine-lib (which I haven't used in years) supports
PulseAudio.

That being said, PulseAudio runs on top of ALSA, so I don't see how
the first could handle OSS apps better than the second.

>  Whenever I want to use sidplay, which only
> speaks OSS, I need to stop all other audio programs (e.g. press Stop in the
> Clementine player if it's only paused), or else /dev/dsp was busy.

With PulseAudio I haven't had none of these problems in ages. But
again, all my used apps support PA either directly or indirectly.

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: What is the best audio system?

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 9:11 PM, Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de> wrote:
> On 28/02/12 04:30, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 08:07:21PM -0600, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
>>
>>>>>> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect that's
>>>>>> how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Yeah, when you wrote dmix the light turned on about how KDE (and I
>>>> suspect most desktop managers) is likely doing it.
>>>
>>>
>>> GNOME uses PulseAudio by default, and since 3.0 is actually mandatory.
>>> I believe Xfce uses PA also, and (please, tell me if I'm wrong) KDE
>>> also by default uses PA.
>>
>>
>> KDE has the phonon layer, which features a PA useflag, but also a flag for
>> gstreamer and vlc.
>
>
> These are not related though.  PA is not a substitute for gstreamer or vlc.

Indeed, but both GStreamer and VLC can run on top of PulseAudio. They
can also (of course) run on top of ALSA, but then you loose all the
nice things PA provides. At least with GStreamer (directly on top of
ALSA) you don't get per-application volume, seamlessly changing sound
cards or easy integration with USB soundcards and bluetooth headsets;
I don't use VLC, but I believe is the same.

ALSA is the bottom of the stack, PulseAudio goes above it, and then
you can have GStreamer, VLC, ffmpeg, Xine-lib or whatever, which are
the high-level libraries. All of the high-level libraries cantalk to
ALSA directly; but none of them provide by themselves the features
that PulseAudio has.

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[YoYo Siska]

On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 03:30:24AM +0100, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> 
> > dmix *may* be able to handle multiple audio streams (in practice, in
> > my personal experience, it always requires more work than PA); but it
> > will never be able to do the other stuff PA handles.
> 
> This seems like a dumb question (for I was a strict PA denier until recently
> and have been using alsa-only since always), but does PA handle OSS
> applications better than alsa/dmix? Whenever I want to use sidplay, which only
> speaks OSS, I need to stop all other audio programs (e.g. press Stop in the
> Clementine player if it's only paused), or else /dev/dsp was busy.

PA doesn't care about oss (/dev/dsp). It opens the soundcard through
normal alsa interface (which means /dev/dsp becomes busy). You can
either kill pulseaudio, or tell pulseaudio to suspend the correspondig
sink (not sure what exactly happens if an audio stream through PA is active
etc..).

Regarading oss (/dev/dsp) and plain alsa, it is the same, if something
opens the soundcard through alsa, /dev/dsp becomes busy... (even when
using dmix in alsa, because /dev/dsp is handled by a kernel modules,
dmix is userspace).

 There is however a way to amke oss work with dmix through aoss (a small
program that preloads a binary, that 'hijacks' calls to open /dev/dsp
and 'reroutes' that to alsa, works most of the time, but can have
problems if the program does some weird things...)
In that case aoss opens the alsa device "pcm.dsp" (or dsp0, i'm not sure
right now), which you can easily point to dmix...

from my /etc/asond.conf:
========================================
pcm.dsp {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "duplex"
}
pcm.dsp0 {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "duplex"
}
pcm.!default {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "duplex"
}
pcm.duplex {
        type asym
        playback.pcm "dmix:0"
        capture.pcm "dsnoop:0"
}
========================================

Then you can run (even multiple) 'aoss mpg123 file.mp3 ...'


You can also make this to work alongside pulseaudio, if you configure
pulseaudio to use the dmix device instead of directyly using the hw
device.
Nnote that this might cause problems, you have to disable pulseaudio's
autodetect and configure all soundcards manually, and using dmix
introduces some additional overhead and probles, also such setup is most
probably not supported by pulseaudio etc... However it also enables you
tu run plain alsa apps alongside PA (officialy you should just configure the
!default device to use the PA alsa plugin is simpler and it should work
better, though I had some problems with some apps) and more importantly
to run multi PAs simultaneusly (ie for multiple users...)


yoyo

Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[Marc Joliet]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1441 bytes --]

Am Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:06:16 +0100
schrieb YoYo Siska <yoyo@gl.ksp.sk>:

> On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 03:30:24AM +0100, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> > 
> > > dmix *may* be able to handle multiple audio streams (in practice, in
> > > my personal experience, it always requires more work than PA); but it
> > > will never be able to do the other stuff PA handles.
> > 
> > This seems like a dumb question (for I was a strict PA denier until recently
> > and have been using alsa-only since always), but does PA handle OSS
> > applications better than alsa/dmix? Whenever I want to use sidplay, which only
> > speaks OSS, I need to stop all other audio programs (e.g. press Stop in the
> > Clementine player if it's only paused), or else /dev/dsp was busy.
> 
> PA doesn't care about oss (/dev/dsp). It opens the soundcard through
> normal alsa interface (which means /dev/dsp becomes busy). You can
> either kill pulseaudio, or tell pulseaudio to suspend the correspondig
> sink (not sure what exactly happens if an audio stream through PA is active
> etc..).

There is also padsp:

    "padsp  starts  the  specified  program and redirects its access to OSS
     compatible audio devices (/dev/dsp and auxiliary devices) to a PulseAudio
     sound server."

[...]
> 
> yoyo
> 
> 

HTH
-- 
Marc Joliet
--
"People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who know we
don't" - Bjarne Stroustrup

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Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 10:06:16AM +0100, YoYo Siska wrote:

> > This seems like a dumb question (for I was a strict PA denier until recently
> > and have been using alsa-only since always), but does PA handle OSS
> > applications better than alsa/dmix? Whenever I want to use sidplay, which only
> > speaks OSS, I need to stop all other audio programs (e.g. press Stop in the
> > Clementine player if it's only paused), or else /dev/dsp was busy.
> 
> PA doesn't care about oss (/dev/dsp). It opens the soundcard through
> normal alsa interface (which means /dev/dsp becomes busy). You can
> either kill pulseaudio, or tell pulseaudio to suspend the correspondig
> sink (not sure what exactly happens if an audio stream through PA is active
> etc..).

I'm not using PA, I only said I denied it completety until recently. ;-)
(I just noticed it was running though, because I installed Gnome 3 a short
while ago to sneak a peak).

> Regarading oss (/dev/dsp) and plain alsa, it is the same, if something
> opens the soundcard through alsa, /dev/dsp becomes busy... (even when
> using dmix in alsa, because /dev/dsp is handled by a kernel modules,
> dmix is userspace).

Thanks for clearing that up.

>  There is however a way to amke oss work with dmix through aoss
> [...]
> Then you can run (even multiple) 'aoss mpg123 file.mp3 ...'

Hooray for the combined knowledge of mailing lists. That makes me happy as to
my question.
-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla'
I forbid any use of my email addresses with Facebook services.

Computer publishers produce computer books that explain
what you didn’t understand in computer magazines.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: What is the best audio system?

[Willie Matthews]

On Tue, 28 Feb 2012 04:14:25 +0200
Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de> wrote:

> On 28/02/12 04:07, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
> > On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Mark Knecht<markknecht@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Paul Hartman
> >> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>  wrote:
> >>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Mark
> >>> Knecht<markknecht@gmail.com>  wrote:
> >>>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Paul Hartman
> >>>> <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>  wrote:
> >>>>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews
> >>>>> <matthews.willie@gmail.com>  wrote:
> >>>>>> Right now I use pulseaudio on my laptop and desktop. Is there
> >>>>>> something else out there that can handle multiple audio
> >>>>>> streams?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> alsa dmix
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Isn't dmix pretty much automatic in als these days? I suspect
> >>>> that's how KDE supports multiple audio streams by default.
> >>>
> >>> Yep, I think it's automatic since alsa 1.0.9 or so.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Yeah, when you wrote dmix the light turned on about how KDE (and I
> >> suspect most desktop managers) is likely doing it.
> >
> > GNOME uses PulseAudio by default, and since 3.0 is actually
> > mandatory. I believe Xfce uses PA also, and (please, tell me if I'm
> > wrong) KDE also by default uses PA.
> 
> Nope.  KDE uses whatever is supported by the Phonon backend.  The 
> default is GStreamer, meaning that whatever GStreamer uses, KDE uses
> too.
> 
> 

Thanks for all of your help folks. Reading all the responses was quite
educational. It seems that I will be sticking with pulseaudio.

-- 

Willie Matthews
matthews.willie@gmail.com