Bjoern, Thank you for your response. I have a couple of questions, stated after the end of your message below: Bjoern JACKE wrote:
On 2005-05-25 at 00:15 -0600 Constantine 'Gus' Fantanas sent off:
(2) aRTS and artsdsp (both presumably 64-bit) seem to handle 64-bit programs fine. However, 32-bit programs like skype (www.skype.com --distributed as a 32-bit binary) and flash player seem to want to monopolize the sound card (skype is still not aRTS-compatible, even on
artsd is a pain anyway and quite obsolete on systems where you have ALSA available. ALSA can share a soundcard to multiple applications (32bit/64bit mixture should not matter here). A nice workaround I use which will also make any proprietary stuff like flash plugin etc. share the sound device instead of blocking it:
Create .asoundrc in your $HOME: # ~/.asoundrc pcm.dsp0 { type plug slave.pcm "dmix" } ctl.mixer0 { type hw card 0 }
and write something like
export LD_PRELOAD=$LD_PRELOAD:/usr/lib/libaoss.so
in /etc/profile.locale
That will override all old oss sound function with ALSA ones. With the ALSA configuration using dmix you can then use multiple sound streams, programs using artsd will still work as artsd is now also using alsa and dmix but in this setup it's better to tell programs to use ALSA or oss directly. You will then also get rid of the typical sound delay you have with programs using artsd if you have more than one sound source.
Bjoern
(1) Do you mean '/etc/profile.local' (not '/etc/profile/locale')? (2) There is '/usr/lib/libaoss.so' and '/usr/lib64/libaoss.so' in my 64-bit SuSE 9.3 . Should both be used? (3) Where can I find some decent documentation about ALSA? SuSE's manual is not very clear (highly unusual for SuSE --I usually pay full price just for their excellent manuals!) and the documentation in alsa.opensrc.org leaves a lot of gaps in my opinion. TIA.