My sound works fine in some programs, not in others...

[AlexMax]

I am working on a box with an Intel 82801DB onboard sound chip, and have been getting some very strange results with sound.

My KDE configuration in the control panel has my sound system set to ALSA. I have also manually changed system eventus to use the command artsplay through System Notifications -> Player Settings..., but now that I look at it, the box is greyed out and I can't edit 'artsplay' out for experimentation purposes.

Here is what works and what doesn't.

* System sounds work
* XMMS works with the ARTS plugin all the time. However, if I use ALSA, it will work fine for a random amount of time, and then suddenly stop working as soon as it switches a song (it may take 10-25 song switches for it to stop and error out on me). At this point, switching it to ARTS makes it work. The sound seems a little out of sync with the vis meter and volume control when used with ARTS, but it's perfectly in sync with ALSA.
* ALSAplayer works, but if anything elese plays while ALSAplayer is running, they get put on the back burner and then played as soon as I exit.
* Soundcard detection testing works
* Macromedia Flash sounds used to work for an unspecified amount of time, like XMMS, before refusing to play unless I rebooted. Now it plain just doesn't play at all.

So yeah....weird. Anyone have any ideas what might be causing my troubles? I am also having trouble with another system using Fedora Core 2, but the problem is a lot less drastic and I don't have access to taht computer right now.

[Jman]

Good question.

You have just stumbled upon the problem where only one program can play sound at one time. Infuriating, isn't it? It happens because one program gets a kind of exclusive lock on the sound device.

arts works in xmms because arts is the kde sound server. It takes KDE system sounds and other sounds played with arts and mixes them.

xmms will continue to work with arts, or create an .asoundrc file in your home directory:

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "swmixer"
}
                                                                                
pcm.swmixer {
type dmix
ipc_key 1234
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 4096
rate 44100
}
}

This should enable software mixing on the default alsa device.

I have the exact same Intel onboard sound, but this problem happens with a lot of hardware.

[deuch]

I'm using dmix with alsaplayer and it works great.

I've got some problem with Xmms and dmix. Sometimes Xmms stop playing when i "stress" my FC2 ... not a really stress something like start firefox, or use fileroller ... when i 'm using the HD ...

Strange ... but with alsaplayer, no problem but xmms is more complete ... arghhh

deuch

[Viro]

I get problems with sound in Fedora Core 2 too (heh, try reading that out loud). I've got a Via sound chip and at times when a sound is played, a message pops up saying that IRQ 11 is disabled and my mouse stops working.

Its really bizarre and it seems to be a documented bug in the kernel. Now I'm waiting for them to update it and fix this bug.