I need dmixing for a few things, but I can't get it working. I havn't tried, since I have no idea where to start. I don't know much about linux, I've googled it, and come up with some stupidass scripts and shit that make no sense to me. Can anyone help me get this working please? I'm using slack 10 with the 2.4 kernel, and the latest version of alsa.

Have you read through the documentation at www.alsa-project.org on software mixing?

http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/asoundrc.php?module=Generic#softmix

It's a fairly complete page, it'd be useful for you if you skimmed through the early section. However, the software mixing section does walk you through it pretty much.

when i followed that guide, aplay was working fine multi-channel, when when i had xmms going and started vmware, sound server crashed...

ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:1155snd_pcm_hw_open) open /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p failed: Device or resource busy

** WARNING **: alsa_setup(): Failed to open pcm device (hw:0,0): Device or resource busy

no sound from anything after that.

I saw that, but I didn't understand it. They don't explain what things are like this:

A very interesting and potentially extremely useful aspect of this plugin is using it combined with the default plugin name. In theory this means all applications that have native ALSA support will share the sound device. In practice not many applications are able to take advantage of this functionality yet. However if you have time to test and report your findings to the application developers it is worth a try:

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}


pcm.dmixer {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave {
pcm "hw:1,0"
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 4096
rate 44100
}
bindings {
0 0
1 1
}
}

ctl.dmixer {
type hw
card 0
}


(To use it with your own name just change the word !default above)

Maybe it's just common knowledge if you use linux, but where am I supposed to be putting that shit at? It's just some code, and it obviously dosn't go into some random text file, and I can't see where it says to put it. And what do I replace !defualt with? What is my 'own name' does that mean I can call it whatever the hell I want or what? I'm sorry if I'm sounding really dumb about this, but it just makes no sense to me.

mmk, well I made a .asoundrc in my root directory, and here's it's contents:

pcm.!default {
type hw
card 0
}

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}


pcm.dmixer {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave {
pcm "hw:1,0"
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 4096
rate 44100
}
bindings {
0 0
1 1
}
}

ctl.dmixer {
type hw
card 0
}

ctl.!default {
type hw
card 0
}

I guess that's how it's supposed to be I dunno. But when I add the second part that should enable the dmix plugin, I no longer have sound, and it says no such device exists when starting kde.

try changing "pcm "hw:1,0"" to pcm "hw:0,0"

Ok, thanks, that worked I guess. I have sound back, dunno if dmixing is working. I wanted to get that so I could play cod, but I still can't. Is there something else I have to do? Do I gotta have oss emulation or something too?

i have no idea. i got multi-channel sound testing with asound (like the instructions say to do), but when i had xmms playing and opened VMWare to boot Windows XP, all sound stopped. If someone could help us out here, it'd be pretty f'in schweet.

Well I found out my problem in cod was I was telling wine to use oss, so I changed that to alsa, I'm still having problems running it, but thats for the other thread. So thanks for the help guys, hope you find out the answer to your problem rjenina

vmware requires oss emulation last I looked

I can get multichannel sound but the second sound is choppy? can anyone help me?
I use this :

You could try increase the buffer_size, say 16384 or 32768
also maybe set the rate to 48000

More infos :
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=AlsaSharing

alright....but how if I try to remove "rate xxxxx"?
but anyway things works now....thanx a lot for your help

An upgrade to Slackware 10.2 or at least to ALSA 1.0.9 will help too - starting with ALSA 1.0.9 (which comes with Slackware 10.2) the DMIX is automatically enabled!

No need for those fancy .asoundrc files there.

Eric

that thing doesnt work for me coz I'm using USB soundcard (extigy) so I have setup "asoundrc"