Multichannel audio not consistent between sound cards?

[Keith Watson]

Hi Al,

I don't know about the ThinkPad, but I own a Dell D400 with an 
integrated Intel i810 POS. Under Winblows it works fine as they 
have all the mixing done by way of software. Alsa on the other 
hand has not yet come up with a suitable solution for the issue 
of software mixing. The SB Live! works because it does all it's 
mixing from the hardware on the card.

That said, here is what I did to resolve the issue, sort of. I 
bought a SB Live! 24bit external usb sound card. All this bought 
me was an extra channel, because Alsa once again does not support 
this card fully. I set the sblive as my default card in the 
config settings and now when I boot orca/viavoice comes up 
talking on the sblive. As soon as I start playing an audio clip 
that card is taken up and orca bounces over to the intel. After I 
am done with the ogg file orca bounces back over to the sblive.

I did notice today though that while listening to an ogg/thera 
movie that it did not bounce and I was once again left without 
audio from orca. Wonder if i can specify a particular card in 
preferences in the movie player? Will have to look into that one.

Anyway, as far as it goes, I would look into an extra sound card 
for the Thinkpad. Check out www.linux-usb.org for some 
suggestions.

Hope this helps,

Keith
On 10:32 PM, Al Puzzuoli wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I am working with two machines running Edgy.  One is a 4 year old desktop 
> with an antique sound blaster live,  probably dating back to the late 90s. 
> the other is a 1 year old IBM ThinkPad T43 with SoundMax integrated audio. 
> I have ESD enabled on both systems. I'm finding that when I attempt to play 
> avi or mp3 files, on the pC with the sound blaster live, everything works 
> fine; However on the laptop, I consistently lose DECtalk or Festival when 
> the audio stream is playing.   The result is that  I can no longer utilize 
> the screen reader, and lose access altogether unless I'm able to alt-f4 out 
> of, or otherwise stop the media player.  i've had this experience with mp3 
> as well as avi files, using both Rhythmbox and Totem Movie player.
> 
> I  guess I have several questions:
> 1.  Aside from playing with ESD, is there anything I can do to resolve the 
> issue?
> 2.  Do all Alsa and/or OSS drivers need to meet some sort of minimum spec 
> before their inclusion into distributions?  If this is a situation where the 
> two drivers aren't created equal, then I wonder if for purposes of 
> accessibility, a revision of this spec should be discussed?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> --Al
>  
> 
> 
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