Can't share audio in ALSA

[Reinhold Rumberger]

On Wednesday 25 August 2010, Basil Chupin wrote:
> On 25/08/2010 02:04, Gerardo wrote:
> > I'm using Kubuntu 10.04 Lucid 64-bit and I'm having a problem
> > that is driving me insane.  If I'm playing music on Amarok, or
> > something in mplayer and another application uses the audio
> > (i.e., KDE notification bell, flash video in firefox, etc...)
> > the music stops.  The timer in Amarok/mplayer keeps running as
> > if the song is still playing, but I can't get the audio back
> > unless I stop playback and restart it again. Pausing and
> > unpausing doesn't work.
> > 
> > The same thing works backwards.  If I'm watching a video in
> > firefox and start Amarok, then the sound in firefox goes out
> > and I have to reload the page for it to come back.  I didn't
> > have any problems in Hardy.  It works fine on my kids computer.
> > 
> > I installed installed pulseaudio on this computer and later
> > removed it and went back to ALSA.  I don't know if doing this
> > fudged something.
> > 
> > Lou
> 
> I believe the reason why pulseaudio was 'created' is because it
> can share sound from a number of sources - unlike alsa, which is
> what you are now experiencing.

That's rubbish. OSS didn't support mixing natively (that's why arts 
and other sound daemons were needed), Alsa does. You obviously 
shouldn't use the OSS compatibility layer if you want to use your 
sound card with multiple applications.

Incidentally, I run Alsa exclusively, no pulse anywhere to be seen. 
Skype often annoys the heck out of me because it insists on beeping 
while I watch videos or listen to music.

@Gerardo: Try making sure that you're using only pulse or alsa. Using 
both in parallel will result in more or less funny errors.

  --Reinhold