newyorkcity Posted April 27, 2008 Share Posted April 27, 2008 How to get around the limitation of not being able to use multiple audio/video application at the same time I observed this ( a long time ago in the early days of Ubuntu) if I can run other apps. when I was using the mp3 player and started the skype, then i tried to seeif trying to playback using other players will result into the same. is there a workaround? In Win no matter how many streams, playbacks you do, you can use the sound card aat the same time with other audios but in (at least Ubuntu) I see it differently. Like one at a time. I know things about Ubuntu, just certain stuffs which I don't . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elv13 Posted April 27, 2008 Share Posted April 27, 2008 Ubuntu (and linux) is able to have many multimedia application using the sound card at the same time, but it is not as easy as it sound. The card (hardware) can only play 1 stream at the time, not many. So you have to use (in linux, osx and windows too) a mixer. In Ubuntu, you have many of them, gstreamer, alsamixer, oss, arts, pulseaudio etc esound. If all multimedia use the same mixer, then it will work, if they use different mixer, it will not work. Take a look at options of your multimedia application to see if you can choose 1. The default one in Ubuntu is now the young pulseAudio, older version were using gstreamer or alsamixer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted April 27, 2008 Veteran Share Posted April 27, 2008 I have only had this problem with java in firefox conflicting with other audio (namely the mplayer I usually have playing ripped CDs). In that case, I just changed my shortcut to firefox to be aoss firefox rather than plain "firefox", which tells it to use the ALSA/OSS aware sound system - eliminating conflict. If you have a specific example, maybe we can see if that solution works for you, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ootput Posted April 27, 2008 Share Posted April 27, 2008 You'll need to look into dmix for alsa cards for your distro. Chances are there will be a guide, and there may(not) already be an asoundrc entry for your particular needs. Dmix allows multiple audio streams at a time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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