Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?
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?
Am Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:06:16 +0100 schrieb YoYo Siska y...@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 signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?
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. pgpxr9Gzr3tft.pgp Description: PGP signature
[gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?
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.wil...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Willie Matthews matthews.wil...@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.wil...@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?
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 markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Willie Matthews matthews.wil...@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.wil...@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?
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 juantas...@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 markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Willie Matthews matthews.wil...@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.wil...@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?
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews matthews.wil...@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
Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews matthews.wil...@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?
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews matthews.wil...@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?
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews matthews.wil...@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?
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Willie Matthews matthews.wil...@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
Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?
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... pgpF432Su6vjk.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] What is the best audio system?
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Frank Steinmetzger war...@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
