Can't play multiple players at same time-sound being used

smiley_lauf · 02-18-2006, 06:43 PM

Say I am playing a radio station with real player, bu now I want to switch to play local music, it will not play, because "another application is using the sound card" or something like this. This happens with Skype as well (can't use skype when music playing at same time"; I know this sounds stupid that I should be listening to two things at the same time, but as a comparsion, in Win Xp this does not happen; I am sure I am missing something in the settings, and would appreciate your input here,
Thanks
Sl

gilead · 02-18-2006, 06:50 PM

Are you using the ALSA sound stuff? If so, that's normal (kind of) behaviour. The following from the FAQ that came with the 1.0.11rc3 driver describes something similar to your situation:

Quote:

Q: When I play something and I try to play something other the second attempt
will not fail but instead it hangs waiting for the completion of the first
sound.
A: This is definitely the standard behaviour as described in many official
documents that now ALSA follows. There is no reasons to complain about that
for the following reasons:
- it's the right (standard) way
- the application that want a different behaviour can open the device in
O_NONBLOCK mode
- all modern OSS drivers in mainstream kernel (cmpci, es1370, es1371,
esssolo1, maestro, sonicvibes, vwsnd) works in the same ways and the
others have to be intended buggy
- we want you ask to broken applications author to fix them ;-)

It seems that it's the applications not using non-blocking mode that causes your problem.

arsham · 02-18-2006, 06:59 PM

do you like to listen to a heavy metal music , while you are watching a romantic movie?!