[lug] Linux sound or lack thereof

[Michael D. Hirsch]

On Thursday 09 September 2004 12:57 pm, Paul E Condon wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 09, 2004 at 10:09:31AM -0400, Michael D. Hirsch wrote:
> > On Thursday 09 September 2004 12:59 am, Daniel Webb wrote:
> > > I've spent way too many hours trying to find any linux sound frameworks
> > > that aren't total shit.  Here's what I've tried so far:
> > >
> > > esound - doesn't seem to work at all
> >
> > Really braindamaged program in many ways.  But so simple that it should
> > work.
> >
> > > arts - artsbuilder crashes when trying to execute anything at all
> >
> > Much better than esound technically, but more complex in my experience.
> >
> > > jack - won't start (filed Debian bug report)
> > > jack compiled from sources - seems to start fine, but client can't
> > > connect
> >
> > Don't know about those.
> >
> > Are you using alsa or OSS sound drivers?  You need to make sure that
> > whatever you are using knows how to deal with your drivers.  I think arts
> > works better with alsa, esound with OSS, but that may well be wrong.  But
> > if you configure them backwards there will probably be trouble.
> >
> > > All I want to do is capture whatever is coming out of XMMS and send it
> > > to icecast.  Either I'm just totally overlooking something, or there
> > > are some real deficiences here.  As you may have guessed, this has
> > > become really frustrating.  There are xmms output plugins for arts and
> > > jack, so this really shouldn't be so hard.
> >
> > I thought that alsa had the ability to snoop.  I believe it has a device
> > you can listen to and get all the bits that it is playing.  If my memory
> > is right, you don't need esound/artsd/jack at all.  You just play from
> > xmms (or anything) with alsa output, then have another process read from
> > alsa all the input and forward to icecast.
> >
> > If you don't care about listening to the output in the first place, only
> > about forwarding, you should be able to use the output to a file option. 
> > Make the file a named pipe, and have a process read from the pipe and
> > send to icecast.
> >
> > Michael
>
> I am in a similar position to OP vis-a-vis sound. I have an i386 box
> running Debian Sarge. I know that my sound hardware works, because I can
> hear the sound chords when KDE starts.

That's useful.  Usually KDE uses arts, so unless you've done something, arts 
works.  Can you look in the process list and see if artsd is there?  That 
would really confirm it.

Second, what sound modules are loaded.  That should tell you whether ALSA or 
OSS is in use.

Go into the KDE Control Center.  On my RH system I then go to Sound & 
Multimedia -> Sound System.  Check that "Enable the sound system".  Then down 
lower be sure that autosuspend is enabled.  Make the timeout relatively small 
so that you can have some confidence that the sound device is freed up.

> But I can't get any other form of 
> sound to work. I would like to be able to listen to sound clips from
> nytimes and bbc. I have installed realplayer. realplayer brings up its
> 'skin' on screen, but there is never any actual sound. I have a feeling,
> like OP, that there is something that I am not doing that is just so
> obvious to the cogniscenti that they never mention it, something like the
> meanings of those silly icons on the players for start, stop, rewind, etc.,
> but something else.

Can you play other sounds in KDE other than the startup?  If you have a folder 
displayed in konqueror with sound files in it, what happens if you click on 
the sound file.  Can you play wavs that way?  What about mp3s?

> There are indications that some process has grabbed the 
> sound hardware and won't let others use it. But what process? And how to I
> find it and coax it to play fair? (the indications come from cryptic
> messages from inside the kde configurator which I can't reproduce from
> memory)

fuser is your friend.  as root, run fuser /dev/dsp and see what happens.

Michael