Bug 117806

Summary:	Setup ALSA dmix plugin if card has no hardware mixing
Product:	[openSUSE] SUSE Linux 10.1	Reporter:	Michael Stather <kontakt>
Component:	YaST2	Assignee:	Ladislav Slezák <lslezak>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:	Klaus Kämpf <kkaempf>
Severity:	Enhancement
Priority:	P5 - None
Version:	Alpha 1
Target Milestone:	Alpha 2
Hardware:	Other
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
Found By:	Other	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Michael Stather 2005-09-19 15:50:40 UTC

Sometimes I want to use old OSS applications beside KDE. This is no problem with
the OSS emulation, but my souncard has no hardware mixer and thus I can only
hear sound from the OSS app, not from other ALSA ones.
I read about a "dmix" plugin which provides a software replacement for the
hardware mixer.
Since especially games tend to still use OSS, I suggest that the soundcard
configuration in YaST sets up this module automatically if teh card has no
hardware mixer.

Comment 1 Ladislav Slezák 2005-09-20 08:34:10 UTC

Takashi, what do you think about this feature?

Comment 2 Michael Stather 2005-09-20 10:59:44 UTC

If you aren´t sure whether this is important or not, just have a look at ther
forums on www.transgaming.org. Many people want to use TeamSpeak (OSS only) with
their games, and have to buy a soundcard with hardware mixing because they don´t
know how to setup dmix correctly. This could really be done by the distro :)

Comment 3 Michael Stather 2005-10-30 22:49:54 UTC

Any reason this is still "needinfo"? This applies IMHO to 10.1 as well. Do you need more information?

Comment 4 Alexander Lavrinenko 2005-11-18 07:39:42 UTC

Hello,

please enable dsnoop plugin by default as well. It is useful even if 3rd party app supports ALSA, e.g. softphone.

Comment 6 Ladislav Slezák 2006-10-23 14:29:04 UTC

The dmix plugin is already used by default for most of onboard and PCI soundcards. 

The problem is that OSS applications need to use aoss wrapper to use ALSA plugins (e.g. dmix), use 'aoss <application>' command to start the application.

A note about aoss has been added into the help text in the yast module (yast2-sound-2.13.16).

Comment 7 Roger Larsson 2006-10-23 21:38:09 UTC

Suppose I install an OSS application using YaST.
Will it be installed using 'aoss <application>'?

Like it is done for 3D graphics using
CheckHardware --3D <application>

Anyway my current hardware does not have this problem,
or is it fixed in the oss emulator?

Comment 8 Ladislav Slezák 2006-10-24 08:18:16 UTC

(In reply to comment #7)
> Suppose I install an OSS application using YaST.
> Will it be installed using 'aoss <application>'?

It depends on the application, but in my opinion probably not.

> Like it is done for 3D graphics using
> CheckHardware --3D <application>
> 
> Anyway my current hardware does not have this problem,
> or is it fixed in the oss emulator?

It also depends on the sound card, some sound cards (e.g. SB Live, SB Audigy...) have hardware mixing. They support multiple input streams so a sound server or dmix plugin is not needed.