[vox-tech] Intermittent Sound Issues under Fedora Core 2
Marc Elliot Hall
marc at hallmarc.net
Thu Feb 17 08:50:50 PST 2005
On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 08:21:31PM -0800, Jonathan Stickel wrote:
> While Linux can produce quality sound fairly easily, applications that
> run on Linux do not like to share the sound. Your type of problem is
> quite common and drove me crazy for a long time. I suspect that "arts"
> (KDE's sound server) is competing with XMMS for the use of ALSA (actual
> hardware sound driver). You probably want to enable the "dmix" plugin
> for ALSA:
>
> http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=DmixPlugin
>
> This may not immediately solve your sound problem, but it is a step in
> the right direction. I've found it necessary to configure "esound"
> (another sound server) to use dmix, and then I use the esound plugin in
> XMMS.
After more digging around in my config files, I discovered that the Dmix
Plugin was *already* enabled. However, I also discovered that when I
disabled the KDE sound system, XMMS didn't exhibit the strange behavior
documented below. Apparently, this means that audible system notifications
were interfering with XMMS' use of /dev/dsp.
I did a whole bunch of tinkering with sound, both in the GUI and at the
config file level yesterday, and was at least somewhat satisfied that
I'd be able to play uninterrupted music via XMMS when I left for home
last night. I *thought* that I'd disabled audible system notifications,
unfortunately, to make this possible.
Having left the system up over night (and XMMS playing as a test), I was
surprised (and pleased) to discover that as of this morning, XMMS was
still playing... *AND* I have audible system notifications enabled.
On the down side, I'm not sure *exactly* what I did to make this possible.
I do know that XMMS is now configured to use the arRtsd output plugin,
network sound under KDE is disabled, and hardware full duplex operation
is enabled.
Some references:
http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/pipermail/yellowdog-general/2004-December/017311.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde/2004/04/msg00147.html
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=Dmix+Kde+-+arts%2C+ESD+and+SDL+quick+and+dirty+HOWTO
and the one Jonathan helpfully started me off with:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=DmixPlugin
Obviously one's individual hardware has the largest effect on how all this
stuff works together; however, I haven't the time to investigate further
now that my own system is working...
My /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf file is too large to reasonably post here;
but I'm happy to make it available if it will help solve anybody else's
sound issues.
> The only problem with sound mixing that I have now is
> Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird hanging sound once in awhile. They also use
> esound, BTW
Mozilla seems to be working within this framework just fine. :-)
> HTH,
> Jonathan
>
>
> Marc Elliot Hall wrote:
> > This issue falls under the "annoying quirks" category rather than
> > "mission critical failure"...
> >
> > My desktop system at work is Fedora Core 2 with a 2.6.5-1.358 stock
> > kernel, running KDE 3.2. Most of the time, it works great. I do my
> > development work with xmms running so I can listen to music on my
> > headphones and tune out the ambient noise in the office.
> >
> > However, at seemingly random intervals, always at the end of a song on
> > my xmms playlist, xmms stops playing and (ALSA? artsd?) generates this
> > dialog:
> >
> > couldn't open audio
> > Please check that
> > your soundcard is configured properly
> > you have the correct output plugin selected
> > no sound program is blocking the soundcard
> >
> > Sometimes there's an accompanyng alert tone, sometimes not. Xmms doesn't
> > crash... it just stops playing. When this happens, sometimes I
> > immediately try to click play again; other times I simply continue with
> > whatever I was doing until It's convenient to ctrl-tab over to xmms and
> > press play then. And, again, sometimes pressing play immediately starts
> > the music right up. But other times, the dialog re-asserts itself and I
> > get no joy.
> >
> > Sometimes when this happens, I've selected a different xmms output
> > plugin, and other times I've just left it on ALSA. It seems to make no
> > difference in the behavior. And *always*, if I wait long enough, xmms
> > will allow me to continue listening. Sometimes after only one click of
> > the play button, sometimes not for ten minutes.
> >
> > A quick search of Google Groups reveals nothing that seems to pertain;
> > RedHat's documentation doesn't cover this; I found a troubleshooting
> > script here:
> >
> > http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php?page=aadebug
> >
> > which doesn't seem to uncover anything out-of-the-ordinary (other than
> > not being able to find lsmod and lspci)...
> >
> > *************************************************************************
> > ALSA Audio Debug v0.0.8 - Tue Feb 15 11:07:02 PST 2005
> > http://alsa.opensrc.org/?aadebug
> >
> > Kernel ----------------------------------------------------
> > Linux mhall 2.6.5-1.358 #1 Sat May 8 09:04:50 EDT 2004 i686 i686 i386
> > GNU/Linux
> >
> > Loaded Modules --------------------------------------------
> > bin/./alsack.sh: line 10: lsmod: command not found
> >
> > Modprobe Conf ---------------------------------------------
> > alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
> > install snd-intel8x0 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-intel8x0 &&
> > /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
> > remove snd-intel8x0 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; };
> > /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-intel8x0
> >
> > Proc Asound -----------------------------------------------
> > Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.4rc2 (Tue Mar 30
> > 08:19:30 2004 UTC).
> > Compiled on May 8 2004 for kernel 2.6.5-1.358.
> > 0 [I82801BAICH2 ]: ICH - Intel 82801BA-ICH2
> > Intel 82801BA-ICH2 at 0xd800, irq 10
> > 0: [0- 0]: ctl
> > 25: [0- 1]: digital audio capture
> > 16: [0- 0]: digital audio playback
> > 24: [0- 0]: digital audio capture
> > 1: : sequencer
> > 33: : timer
> > cat: /proc/asound/hwdep: No such file or directory
> > 00-00: Intel ICH : Intel 82801BA-ICH2 : playback 1 : capture 1
> > 00-01: Intel ICH - MIC ADC : Intel 82801BA-ICH2 - MIC ADC : capture 1
> >
> > Dev Snd ---------------------------------------------------
> > controlC0 hwC2D0 midiC0D4 midiC2D0 midiC3D4 pcmC0D4c pcmC1D2c
> > pcmC2D0c pcmC2D6c pcmC3D4c
> > controlC1 hwC2D1 midiC0D5 midiC2D1 midiC3D5 pcmC0D4p pcmC1D2p
> > pcmC2D0p pcmC2D6p pcmC3D4p
> > controlC2 hwC2D2 midiC0D6 midiC2D2 midiC3D6 pcmC0D5c pcmC1D3c
> > pcmC2D1c pcmC2D7c pcmC3D5c
> > controlC3 hwC2D3 midiC0D7 midiC2D3 midiC3D7 pcmC0D5p pcmC1D3p
> > pcmC2D1p pcmC2D7p pcmC3D5p
> > hwC0D0 hwC3D0 midiC1D0 midiC2D4 pcmC0D0c pcmC0D6c pcmC1D4c
> > pcmC2D2c pcmC3D0c pcmC3D6c
> > hwC0D1 hwC3D1 midiC1D1 midiC2D5 pcmC0D0p pcmC0D6p pcmC1D4p
> > pcmC2D2p pcmC3D0p pcmC3D6p
> > hwC0D2 hwC3D2 midiC1D2 midiC2D6 pcmC0D1c pcmC0D7c pcmC1D5c
> > pcmC2D3c pcmC3D1c pcmC3D7c
> > hwC0D3 hwC3D3 midiC1D3 midiC2D7 pcmC0D1p pcmC0D7p pcmC1D5p
> > pcmC2D3p pcmC3D1p pcmC3D7p
> > hwC1D0 midiC0D0 midiC1D4 midiC3D0 pcmC0D2c pcmC1D0c pcmC1D6c
> > pcmC2D4c pcmC3D2c seq
> > hwC1D1 midiC0D1 midiC1D5 midiC3D1 pcmC0D2p pcmC1D0p pcmC1D6p
> > pcmC2D4p pcmC3D2p timer
> > hwC1D2 midiC0D2 midiC1D6 midiC3D2 pcmC0D3c pcmC1D1c pcmC1D7c
> > pcmC2D5c pcmC3D3c
> > hwC1D3 midiC0D3 midiC1D7 midiC3D3 pcmC0D3p pcmC1D1p pcmC1D7p
> > pcmC2D5p pcmC3D3p
> >
> > CPU -------------------------------------------------------
> > model name : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 1.50GHz
> > cpu MHz : 1483.674
> >
> > RAM -------------------------------------------------------
> > MemTotal: 516688 kB
> > SwapTotal: 1048816 kB
> >
> > Hardware --------------------------------------------------
> > bin/./alsack.sh: line 50: lspci: command not found
> >
> > *************************************************************************
> >
> > I don't even know where to start looking for a solution...
> >
--
Marc Elliot Hall
P.O. Box 435
Shingle Springs, CA 95682
www.hallmarc.net
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