On Sunday 28 February 2010 16:49, Max Pyziur wrote:
Greetings,
I've noticed that when I have firefox open (haven't checked this w/ other
browsers) and have watched/listened to a file with sound, I can't later
open rhythmbox and listen to a sound file or podcast.
Is this a configuration issue where both apps can be open and used at
least alternately, if not concurrently?
Thanks.
Max Pyziur
pyz(a)brama.com
I think that, that is a flash issue, where when you've finished listening to
something, flash insists on hanging on to /dev/dsp, thus stopping other sound
apps from playing.
I'd been listening to the BBC radio with realplayer, stopped realplayer, then
opened the BBC's iplayer which uses flash in Firefox. Played the BBC stream
for a bit in Firefox (which is terrible dues to the flash stream requiring
more bandwidth than my dialup connection can deliver), then stopped the
iplayer, also closing the tab for it, and tried to start realplayer playing
again, without success.
I had to close firefox completely before flash would let go of /dev/dsp. Only
after that would realplayer work again.
Try the line below when you've used flash, and can't get other sound apps to
play afterwards. It will tell you what is grabbing the soundcard.
/usr/sbin/lsof -n | grep /dev/dsp
The problem is that most soundcards are only able to play sound from one app
at a time, unless you have an audigy2 soundblaster card which is capable of
hardware mixing, and dealing with multiple audio streams. Saying that though,
dmix is supposed to be able to deal with multiple sound apps on other cards.
I think that flash may be the exception.
Leaving flash out of the equation, I have no problems with other apps failing
to release the soundcard when I stop the app. and I mean just stop the app
playing, not closing it completely. for example, I can play something in
realplayer, stop it, then play something with mhwaveedit, stop that, and
start playing realplayer again with no problems. That's on my very old FC2
install, which machine has an Ensoniq (ens1371) soundcard.
Apologies for Sunday afternoon ramble.
Nigel.