[linux-audio-user] Sound cards inquiry (onboard solutions).

[Lee Revell]

On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 14:28 -0500, Gain Paolo Mureddu wrote:
> Lee Revell escribió:
> > The problem you describe has been solved since about ALSA 1.0.9.
> >
> > ALSA uses software mixing by default for all devices that require it,
> > and OSS apps must be run with the "aoss" wrapper to make use of it.
> > Apps that don't work with this simply need to be fixed.
> >
> > Lee
> >   
> I realize this, however as a sys admin I still have to struggle to 
> explain to users why popular applications such as Skype makes their 
> system produce no sound whatsoever or why do their media player stops 
> woking whenever they have open Skype or why do the messages stop 
> sounding when... etc, etc. That is what I meant. Not that technically 
> this wasn't possible. Still I've been unable to make some OSS 
> applications play nice with aoss (for instance the Quake3 game, the 
> TeamSpeak VoIP app, Skype, etc).

Yep, it sucks.  The impossibility of making in-kernel OSS emulation with
the advanced features of ALSA is probably the #1 unresolved sound issue
afflicting the Linux desktop.  The only solution I see is to get these
apps fixed.  Skype and Macromedia (flash plugin) have been promising
native ALSA support for some time now - maybe that will happen
someday ;-).  We should try to educate closed source vendors that OSS is
not a reasonable option.

You could help by trying to figure out why these apps won't work with
aoss - there are a few open ALSA bug reports with lots of info already.

>  These problems obviously do not happen 
> with hardware mixing capable hardware (like aging and trusty Sound 
> Blaster Live! Value), and as such , we've decided to try and see which 
> commodity audio solutions support hardware mixing beyond ALi and some 
> VIA chipsets (BTW, does any body know if/when the Envy series of chips 
> will support HW mixing, or if they even do HW mixing in Windows?... I 
> was asked the other day about this)
> 

I don't think anyone has designed a new hardware mixing device in years.
It's all single-access with software mixing these days because it makes
the hardware cheaper.  The Envy stuff will never support hardware mixing
because it works on Windows without it ;-)

Lee