On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 11:24 AM, Arve Barsnes <arve.barsnes@gmail.com> wrote:

On 8 January 2015 at 15:10, Len Ovens <len@ovenwerks.net> wrote:
> Just? Just routing all programs to alsa means each or any blocks all others.
> One ends up with the mess that at least three audio servers have been tried
> of which Pulse seems to be the one that has been chosen

I keep seeing people say this, but I have never noticed any program
blocking the sound of any other. I can play sound from mplayer,
audaciuos, audacity, firefox, whatever, all at the same time, never
had pulseaudio installed, everything through alsa. What am I doing
wrong? :p

two possibilities: (a) you're on a distro that decided to try using ALSA's builtin mixing system ("dmix") (b) you have a really old soundcard that can mix in hardware.