[ale] Is Sound in Linux Single-Threaded?

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Sat, 2008-06-21 at 05:35 -0400, Marc Ferguson wrote:
> Based on my observation it seems that the sound for my linux box is
> single threaded.  If one device uses sound, it seems to lock it and if
> another application tries to use it, it is pretty much unsuccessful.
> Is this true or do I not have the right drivers installed.

The short answer is that "it depends."

There is software mixing available for various things.  ALSA is capable
of doing this, as well, though some distributions configure it by
default to use hardware channels.  *I* have never owned a card that had
more than one hardware channel, so I've never used it that way.  Some
distributions may not enable this by default---I am not sure what
Fedora's stance on that is, though I would expect that something like
ESD would be available (for applications that know how to talk to it,
anyway).

On my Ubuntu 8.04 LTS system, multiple sound channels in software "just
work."  I did have to set _my_ box to use ALSA instead of telling GNOME
to auto-detect (PulseAudio seems broken, so I was avoiding using that).
I have Banshee and Pidgin and other things all cooperating to make sound
happen from multiple applications at the same time, however some
applications will absolutely _insist_ on holding the sound card
exclusively (such as anything written in Java), which is totally
brain-dead behavior.  Java is the only software I know of currently that
behaves in this rather irrational manner, talking exclusively to ALSA
and demanding exclusive access to the sound card.

My old computer had an ALC883 chipset in it, running Ubuntu, and
multiple sounds worked just fine in both Ubuntu Gutsy and Hardy.

	--- Mike

-- 
Michael B. Trausch                                   mike at trausch.us
home: 404-592-5746, 1                                 www.trausch.us
cell: 678-522-7934                       im: mike at trausch.us, jabber
Ubuntu Unofficial Backports Project:    http://backports.trausch.us/

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