Hi Lee,
why alsa does
not
do mixing in software by default
Please reread the thread again. It does do this by default. ALSA 1.0.9
or later is required.
I knew this. But in the context of explaining the problem, it's essential
to mention it. I should have said "did" instead of "does".
All this mainly to give a reply to jwz (or better, to the people who read
his rant and were influenced by it)
So all the advice needed is "make sure you use
the latest ALSA".
That, and:
- make sure no applications use "hw:0,0" instead of "default"
- if you use oss applications, make sure you use libaoss (or am I wrong
here? does alsa pcm emulation use "default" as well?)
- if you use jack, either accept jack through dmix, or make sure you
_always_ run jack, and use tell all applications that can to use jack,
and redefine the "default" device to be the "jack" plugin for the
other
applications.
Still, the amount of (unnecesary, in the light of dmix) sound daemons,
remains a problem. Even though the dmix default would even allow to run
several sound daemons at the same time, this is hardly a desirable
situation. Maybe, as I think someone mentioned in the thread, the sound
daemons will automagically cease to exist once developpers realize there
is no need for them. But it would be good to speed up the process.
maarten