Sounds? Yes, But One Per Time!

Message

smurfed · Post by **smurfed** » Fri May 06, 2005 2:03 pm

Hello. I'm new to the whole thing and both ALSA and OSS architectures are a little blurry to me

I have an A7N8X motherboard. With a nvidia chipset. And I cannot hear 2 sonds at the same moment, example: if i'm listening to an mp3 with xmms, i cannot hear the notify sounds of aMSN or hear a flash animation in firefox.The same with mplayer: if im watching a video, i cannot hear any other sound.

I have alsa compiled in my kernel. And i also emerged all the files necessary to work. I really dont know what to do to make it works.

ruben- · Post by **ruben-** » Fri May 06, 2005 2:27 pm

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_ALSA_sound_mixer_aka_dmix

- Ruben

smurfed · Post by **smurfed** » Fri May 06, 2005 2:32 pm

lspci | grep -i audio

Code: Select all

0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AC97 Audio Controler (MCP) (rev a1)
root@smurfed smurf #

cat /etc/modules.d/alsa

Code: Select all

# Alsa 0.9.X kernel modules' configuration file.
# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/media-sound/alsa-utils/files/alsa-modules.conf-rc,v 1.4 2004/11/16 01:31:22 eradicator Exp $

# ALSA portion
# OSS/Free portion

##
## IMPORTANT:
## You need to customise this section for your specific sound card(s)
## and then run `update-modules' command.
## Read alsa-driver's INSTALL file in /usr/share/doc for more info.
##
##  ALSA portion
## alias snd-card-1 snd-ens1371
##  OSS/Free portion
## alias sound-slot-1 snd-card-1
##

# OSS/Free portion - card #1
##  OSS/Free portion - card #2
## alias sound-service-1-0 snd-mixer-oss
## alias sound-service-1-3 snd-pcm-oss
## alias sound-service-1-12 snd-pcm-oss

alias /dev/mixer snd-mixer-oss
alias /dev/dsp snd-pcm-oss
alias /dev/midi snd-seq-oss

# Set this to the correct number of cards.

# --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---
# --- ALSACONF verion 1.0.8 ---
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
alias sound-slot-0 snd-intel8x0
# --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. ---

And im using kernel 2.6.11-gentoo-r6.

---

ruben- wrote:http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_ALSA_sound_mixer_aka_dmix

- Ruben

Ruben, i've been through this HOWTO already. But the problem remains

xafan · Post by **xafan** » Sat May 07, 2005 10:01 am

All the same for me, I've done that HOWTO as well.

ruben- · Post by **ruben-** » Sat May 07, 2005 10:47 am

Are your apps set to use ALSA output?

- Ruben

xafan · Post by **xafan** » Sun May 08, 2005 2:14 am

ruben- wrote:Are your apps set to use ALSA output?

- Ruben

I'm not sure about Firefox but I know XMMS is using alsa output.

Flandry · Post by **Flandry** » Sun May 08, 2005 3:45 am

Mine is doing the same thing. All of the sounds are queued up, and come out one at a time. It's annoying. I'm using a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card.

chunderbunny · Post by **chunderbunny** » Sun May 08, 2005 11:18 am

Well for Nforce users you can always use the proprietary Nvidia driver rather than the OSS driver. To use it you have to disable ALSA in your kernel and enable OSS (but don't enable nay OSS drivers). Then emerge nforce-audio (I think the ~arch version is best so you might want to unmask it) which will give you hardware mixing and a nicer sound.

The downsides are
a) it's a propritary driver.
b) you have to remember to re-emerge the driver every tiem you upgrade your kernel
c) the driver has a few bugs which means it won't work with a few apps (skype is probably the most annoying)

gwolf · Post by **gwolf** » Sun May 08, 2005 11:48 am

I had the same problem and got it working by using esound instead of alsa directly.

hawk072 · Post by **hawk072** » Mon May 09, 2005 1:52 am

Flandry wrote:Mine is doing the same thing. All of the sounds are queued up, and come out one at a time. It's annoying. I'm using a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card.

The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz can use hardware mixing, no need for dmix. To enable it, make sure you have CONFIG_SND_CS46XX_NEW_DSP=y set in your kernel .config file.

I use the Santa Cruz and it works great. I disabled the onboard NForce2 sound on my Abit NF7-S.

Arainach · Post by **Arainach** » Mon May 09, 2005 3:09 am

Presuming what hawk said is true (I have no experience with Turtle Beach cards), follow his advice and stick to hardware mixing. dmix can work but it's just a pain to configure and doesn't always work. I had it semi-working and finally just gave in, disabled my onboard sound and bought an Audigy2 ZS. I love it. About a trillion mixing channels which I can control individually on the fly, great sound quality, and it's as simple as compiling the emu10k1 driver into my kernel; no other thinking necessary.

placeholder · Post by **placeholder** » Mon May 09, 2005 3:19 am

I use the nVidia proprietary drivers and I get Dolby Digital sound through my receiver, so recompiling it for new kernels is definitely worth it. I also do not use Skype though, so therefore I have no issues with it. You also only need sound support because adding OSS support just allows you to select drivers for OSS if the ones for your card are in the kernel. Cheers.

xafan · Post by **xafan** » Tue May 10, 2005 2:14 am

I just unemerged ALSA packages, added OSS to kernel compile (module), removed the ALSA tag from USE in make.conf, reemerged with newuse and then emerged nforce-audio.

....Still won't work....

chunderbunny · Post by **chunderbunny** » Tue May 10, 2005 10:03 am

Did you modprobe nvsound? Did you completely remove all ALSA parts of the kernel?