ESD has always had poor sound for me. You can get ALSA to handle your
channel mixing and set all of your applications to use it directly.
ALSA has a plugin (dmix) that you can use to get the job done. All it
takes is a little information in /etc/asound.conf to get it set up.
I've attached a sample /etc/asound.conf file that will work for most
sound cards. You can try to use it as-is, or modify it as needed. With
a little luck, you'll be able to simply drop it in and it will start
working. It sets the dmix plugin as default, so all you have to do to
get applications to use it directly is set them to use ALSA. Once this
is set up, you'll be able to play sound from many applications at once,
including from multiple sound servers. You can continue to have ESD
enabled and have programs use it when needed, but it won't block
playback from applications using ALSA directly.
-Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}
ctl.!default {
type hw
card 1
}
pcm.dsp0 {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}
ctl.mixer0 {
type hw
card 0
}
pcm.dmixer {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 4096
rate 44100
}
bindings {
0 0
1 1
}
}